ASTOE ENCOUNTERS NEW OPPONENTS 39 



Red River, thence overland to the Mandan country and 

 St. Louis. 



These two disasters marked the wane of the Mis 

 souri Company. 



But like the shipwrecked sailor, no sooner safe on 

 land than he must to sea again, the indomitable Andrew 

 Henry linked his fortunes with General Ashley of St. 

 Louis. Gathering to the new standard Campbell, 

 Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Beckworth, Smith, and the Sub- 

 lettes men who made the Rocky Mountain trade 

 famous Ashley and Henry led one hundred men to 

 the mountains the first year and two hundred the 

 next. In that time not less than twenty-five lives were 

 lost among Aricaras and Blackfeet. Few pelts were 

 obtained and the expeditions were a loss. 



But in 1824 came a change. Smith met Hudson s 

 Bay trappers loaded with beaver pelts in the Columbia 

 basin, west of the Rockies. They had become separated 

 from their leader, Alexander Ross, an old Astorian. 

 Details of this bargain will never be known ; but when 

 Smith came east he had the Hudson s Bay furs. This 

 was the first brush between Rocky Mountain men and 

 the Hudson s Bay, and the mountain trappers scored. 



Henceforth, to save time, the active trappers met 

 their supplies annually at a rendezvous in the moun 

 tains, in Pierre s Hole, a broad valley below the Tetons, 

 or Jackson s Hole, east of the former, or Ogden s Hole 

 at Salt Lake. Seventeen Rocky Mountain men had been 

 massacred by the Snake Indians in the Columbia basin ; 

 but that did not deter General Ashley himself from 

 going up the Platte, across the divide to Salt Lake. 

 Here he found Peter Ogden, a Hudson s Bay trapper, 

 with an enormous prize of beaver pelts. When the Hud- 



