MAN OF THE
MOUNTAINS
But the life of a mountain man was also exciting. From day to day, he never knew what he might see or whom he might meet. For Baptiste, this constant promise of adventure was irresistible.
Other clues to why Baptiste would choose this line of work come from the writings of a western traveler named T. J. Farnham. In 1839 Farnham came upon an educated Indian mountain man who, though unnamed in Farnham's journal, was probably Baptiste. Farnham asked why he left the comforts of Europe for the uncertainties of the West. Baptiste explained that he was not satisfied with the “descriptions of things” found in books. He wanted to experience the natural world first hand, with his own eyes. Baptiste told Farnham, “I must range the hills, I must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to strip my own wardrobe from the backs of deer and buffalo, and to feed upon their rich loins.”
While mountain men often traveled to little known areas of the West, they were not explorers like Lewis and Clark. Their job was to trap beavers for the animals’ thick brown furs. In Europe and the eastern United States, these furs were used to trim the coats and dresses of wealthy men and women. Also in fashion were felt hats made from the smooth underside of beaver pelts.
To catch beavers, mountain men carried several traps with sharp iron teeth. Usually working alone, they waded into the streams where the beavers lived and placed traps under the cold water. Every few days they checked the traps to see if any unsuspecting beavers had been caught while swimming by.
A mountain man had to work hard during the spring and fall trapping seasons. But he always had the summer rendezvous to look forward to. At this annual get-together, trappers sold their furs to traders and stocked up on supplies. The rendezvous, however, was also a time to relax and have fun. Tired and lonely from months in the wilderness, mountain men welcomed the chance to see old friends and make new ones. For an entire month, they visited with one another—singing, dancing, gambling, wrestling, and sharing tall tales.
Baptiste got his start as a mountain man when he was asked to join the fur brigade led by Antoine Robidoux. In 1830, this group of trappers headed out for beaver-rich lands in what are now Idaho and Utah. Baptiste learned fast about the hazards of his new job.
In Shoshone territory in present-day southern Idaho, the trappers came upon a vast area covered with sharp rock. It was dried lava that had flowed from a nearby volcano almost two thousand years earlier. Baptiste’s Shoshone kinsmen often traveled over the lava flows, but most white frontiersmen avoided the region. The rock was so rough and uneven that the area was nicknamed the Craters of the Moon by wary travelers.
The leaders of the Robidoux Brigade, though, were in a hurry to make their way. They chose to take a short cut over the lava flows—a decision that almost cost them their lives. As they rode forward, they discovered huge gaps in the rock, some as deep as fifty feet. After several days of travel, they came upon one so wide that their horses couldn’t jump over it. They had no choice but to turn around. On the trip back, the trappers nearly died. The lava became so hot that they “were almost suffocated by the burning atmosphere that steamed up from it," as one man later wrote. Even worse, they had no water and their only food was dried buffalo. The meat was so salty it made them even more thirsty.
Most of the men finally stumbled on another trapper brigade camped near a steam. Baptiste, though, had gone off alone in another direction in search of water. In the dead of night, he too found the trapper camp, but mistook it for an encampment of Indians. Afraid they would attack him, he quickly filled a beaver-skin container with water from the stream and ran off in the other direction. For eleven brutal days, he wandered, close to death. By chance, Baptiste at last met up with another group of trappers, who took him in until he could be reunited with his own men. One member of the Robidoux Brigade later wrote that Baptiste must have been guided by an “unlucky star.”
Despite this disaster, Baptiste still embraced the mountain man's life. For the next fifteen years, he traveled and trapped, resting only when it was time for the yearly rendezvous. During this period, he made friends with fellow mountain men Joe Meek, Jim Bridger, and Jim Beckwourth. All later became famous when writers published wildly exaggerated stories about their exploits.
Among his fellow mountain men, Baptiste himself earned a keen reputation for his quick-thinking and resourcefulness. One man wrote that Baptiste had “every quality which constitutes excellence in a mountaineer, whether of indomitable courage, or perfect indifference to death or danger; with an iron frame capable of withstanding hunger, thirst, heat, cold, fatigue, and hardships of every kind; of wonderful presence of mind, and endless resource in times of peril.” Another simply said that he was the “best man on foot on the plains and in the Rockies.”
In the rough crowd in which he traveled, Baptiste also stood out for his hospitality. He made friends quickly, often entertaining them with tales of his trips to Europe and travels through the West. One acquaintance, Rufus G. Sage, praised Baptiste as “a gentleman of superior information.” After visiting him at a trading post in 1842, Sage remembered that “there was a quaint humor and shrewdness in his conversation. . . .[He earned] the good graces of listeners, and commanded their admiration and respect.”
Another man impressed by Baptiste’s graciousness was American explorer John C. Frémont. He came upon Baptiste in 1842 while the mountain man was camped on an island on the South Platte River in what is now northeastern Colorado. Two years before, Baptiste had been part of an extremely profitable expedition that carried seven hundred buffalo robes by boat down the river to markets in St. Louis. He was trying to repeat this success, but a light spring rainfall had left the waters of the South Platte too low to navigate. Now Baptiste and his men were trapped as they waited for wagons that could take them and their furs over land.
The situation would have made some men furious, but Baptiste calmly tried to make the most of it. He had his crew set up a comfortable camp under a grove of cottonwood trees that shaded them from the hot sun. When Frémont’s expedition stumbled upon the camp, Baptiste greeted them with enthusiasm and used their arrival as an excuse to throw a party. Baptiste asked one of his men to gather wild mint, which he made into a cool drink called a julep. He then prepared a fine meal of boiled buffalo tongue, one of the mountain man’s favorite delicacies. He even offered his guests coffee with sugar. This was a wonderful and unexpected treat for western travelers. All too often they had nothing more to eat than whatever wild plants they could find or wild game they could hunt that day.
Although Baptiste was more successful than most trappers, by the early 1840s he had to give up the life of the mountain man. He and his fellow frontiersmen had caught so many beavers that there were few left to trap. In addition, fashionable people had grown tired of beaver felt hats and clothing trimmed with beaver fur. They stopped paying high prices for these items, so beaver pelts were no longer worth very much.
The era of the mountain man may have come to an end. For Baptiste, though, a new series of adventures were just beginning. In the years to come, they would take him even farther West, past the Rocky Mountains to the lush lands of California.
Learn about Pomp's life as a California gold miner in
Chapter 5: California Days
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© 2000 Liz Sonneborn. All Rights Reserved.