INFLUENCE OF WILD MAMMALS ON HISTORY 113 



provide them with sufficient food. There were no places in the un- 

 explored regions where they could purchase food, clothing and ammu- 

 nition, no railroads or other transportation systems to carry their sup- 

 plies far from their base for long trips or lengthy stays. The earliest 

 settlements in the West and Northwest were built up about the fur- 

 trading posts, some of which finally developed into large and important 

 cities. 



Fur traders are believed to have visited the present site of St. Paul 

 as early as 1658. LaSalle mentioned the place in 1682 and Carver de- 

 scribed it in 1766. French traders founded St. Louis in 1764, and for a 

 century it was one of the great centers of the fur trade. In 1804, when 

 the first government exploring expedition, under Captains Lewis and 

 Clark, started up the Missouri River, that stream was already known 

 to the trappers and traders as far northwest as the present state of 

 Montana, where tributary streams and other topographic features of 

 the country had been named by French voyageurs. Astoria, near the 

 mouth of the Columbia River, was founded as a fur-trading post in 

 1811. 



The early history of the vast plains and rugged mountains of western 

 and central North America is almost entirely a history of the fur trade. 

 The trappers of the various St. Louis companies preceded Fremont, 

 Long, and all other explorers into the Rocky Mountains. Before Fre- 

 mont crossed the continental divide a trapper's rendezvous had been 

 held at Bear Lake, in southern Idaho, trappers coming in from various 

 directions to trade their pelts for supplies. Through battles between rival 

 groups of trappers and traders, occasional hostilities of Indians and 

 other hazards of life in the wild, unsettled region, some companies are 

 said to have lost 40 per cent of their men in a single year. 



Various exploring expeditions in western United States were also 

 partly dependent upon wild animals for food and clothing. Some of 

 them employed hunters, whose business it was each day to set forth in 

 the search for game. This is true to some extent of all the early expe- 

 ditions Lewis and Clark, Fremont, Long, Pacific Railway, King, 

 Powell, Wheeler and Hayden Surveys. 



In British America the early fur trade was as important as in the 

 territory now constituting the United States, if not more important. 

 The Hudson Bay Company was given almost absolute jurisdiction over 

 the vast Hudson Bay region, and for two centuries dominated a terri- 

 tory as large as the United States in the interests of the fur trade. Its 



