(Am. Nation,
II.), chaps, viii., ix., xii.; see also chap. iv. On the location of
the Indians, see map, p. 309; Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, II., pt.
v., chaps, viii., ix., x.; Bureau of Ethnology, Seventh Annual
Report.]
With the development of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the most
flourishing period of the St. Louis trade in the far west began. The
founder of this company was William H. Ashley, a Virginian. Between
the autumn of 1823 and the spring of the next year, one of his
agents erected a post at the mouth of the Bighorn, and sent out his
trappers through the Green River valley, possibly even to Great Salt
Lake. A detachment of this party found the gateway of the Rocky
Mountains, through the famous South Pass by way of the Sweetwater
branch of the north fork of the Platte. This pass commanded the
routes to the great interior basin and to the Pacific Ocean. What
Cumberland Gap was in the advance of settlement across the
Alleghenies, South Pass was in the movement across the Rocky
Mountains; through it passed the later Oregon and California trails
to the Pacific coast.
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