ASTOR ENCOUNTERS NEW OPPONENTS 41 



to a wilderness and now the Hudson s Bay were cheat 

 ed, cajoled, overreached by the Rocky Mountain trap 

 pers. And the Rocky Mountain trappers, in their turn, 

 met a rival that could outcheat their cheatery. 



In 1831 the mountains were overrun with trappers 

 from all parts of America. Men from every State in 

 the Union, those restless spirits who have pioneered 

 every great movement of the race, turned their faces 

 to the wilderness for furs as a later generation was to 

 scramble for gold. 



In the summer of 1832, when the hunters came down 

 to Pierre s Hole for their supplies, there were trappers 

 who had never before summered away from Detroit 

 and Mackinaw and Hudson Bay.* There were half- 

 wild Frenchmen from Quebec who had married In 

 dian wives and cast off civilization as an ill-fitting 

 garment. There were Indian hunters with the mel 

 low, rhythmic tones that always betray native blood. 

 There were lank Xew Englanders under Wyeth of Bos 

 ton, erect as a mast pole, strong of jaw, angular of mo 

 tion, taking clumsily to buckskins. There were the 

 Rocky Mountain men in tattered clothes, with unkempt 

 hair and long beards, and a trick of peering from their 

 bushy brows like an enemy from ambush. There were 

 probably odd detachments from Captain Bonneville s 

 adventurers on the Platte, where a gay army adventurer 

 was trying his luck as fur trader and explorer. And 

 there was a new set of men, not yet weather-worn by 

 the wilderness, alert, watchful, ubiquitous, scattering 

 themselves among all groups where they could hear 

 everything, see all, tell nothing, always shadowing the 

 Rocky Mountain men who knew every trail of the wilds 



* For example, the Deschamps of Red River. 



