358 TRADING EXPEDITION OF PILCHER. [1828. 



These traders carried on for many years an extensive and profit- 

 able business, in the course of which they traversed every part 

 of the country about the southern branch of the Columbia, and 

 nearly the whole of continental California. Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, they made no astronomical observations, and, being unac- 

 quainted with any branch of physical science, very little information 

 has been derived through their means. Smith, after twice crossing 

 the continent to the Pacific, was murdered, in the summer of 1829, 

 by the Indians north-west of the Utah Lake. 



These active proceedings of the Missouri fur traders roused 

 the spirit of the North American Company, which also extended its 

 operations beyond the Rocky Mountains, though no establishments 

 were formed by its agents in those countries ; and many expeditions 

 were made, in the same direction, by independent parties, of whose 

 adventures, narratives, more or less exact and interesting, have been 

 published. In 1827, Mr. Pilcher went from Council Bluffs, on the 

 Missouri, with forty-five men, and more than a hundred horses; and, 

 having crossed the great dividing chain of mountains by the South- 

 ern Pass, he spent the winter on the Colorado. In the following 

 year, he proceeded to the Lewis River, and thence, northwardly, 

 along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, on their western side, to 

 the Flathead Lake, near the 47th degree of latitude, which he 

 describes as a beautiful sheet of water, formed by the expansion of 

 the Clarke River, in a rich and extensive valley, surrounded by high 

 mountains. There he remained until the spring of 1829, when 

 he descended the Clarke to Fort Colville, an establishment then 

 recently formed by the Hudson's Bay Company, on the northern 

 branch of the Columbia, at its falls ; and thence he returned to the 

 United States, through the long and circuitous route of the Upper 

 Columbia, the Athabasca, the Assinaboin, Red River, and the Upper 

 Missouri. The countries thus traversed by Mr. Pilcher have all 

 become comparatively well known from the accounts of subsequent 

 travellers ; but very little information had been given to the world 

 respecting them before the publication of his concise narrative.* 

 The account of the rambles of J. O. Pattie, a Missouri fur trader, 

 through New Mexico, Chihuahua, Sonora, and California, published 

 in 1832, throws some light on the geography of parts of those 

 countries of which little can as yet be learned from any other 

 source. During his peregrinations, Pattie several times crossed the 

 great dividing chain of mountains between New Mexico on the 



* Published with President Jackson's message to Congress, January 23d, 1829. 



