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Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Artwr, Ml 48106-1346 THE MOUNTAIN MAN IN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY ©COPYRIGHT by S. MATTHEW DESPAIN 2000 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE........................................................................................................................... V CHAPTER ONE Evolution of a Hero .............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO History, Culture, and the Mountain Man H ero .................................................................45 CHAPTER THREE Playing Mountain M an ...................................................................................................... 80 CHAPTER FOUR A Marketable M an ........................................................................................................ 125 CHAPTER FIVE Bastion of Masculinity .................................................................................................. 161 CHAPTER SIX The Good, the Bad, and Up There Still ......................................................................... 209 APPENDIX.....................................................................................................................236 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................... 239 Primary Sources Secondary Sources -IV- PREFACE The mountain man hero enjoys a prominent place in American culture and his persistent image is an index of his appeal. Understanding how this image is perceived in the American mind and how it is manifested in numerous quarters of American culture becomes as important as analyzing the historic mountain man. This study then presents a history of an image, but it is also intended to reveal much about the society that embraces that image. Over the years, the mountain man emerges as a cultural icon, a hero. The early mountain traveler-turned pundit, Rufus B Sage, in his “Scenes in the Rocky Mountains,” defines the mountain man as “a kind of siti genus, an oddity, both in dress, language, and appearance from the rest of mankind.”* Historian William Goetzmann upholds the mountain man’s symbolic significance as a “quintessentially unique American,” a creature “no other country has produced.”’ And the mountain man is among what Dixon Wecter calls the “magic ranks of those... whom every man takes as his heroes The mountain man typifies 'Rufus B. Sage, “Scenes in the Rocky Mountains and in Oregon, California, New Mexico, Texas, and the Grand Prairies,” in Rufiis B. Sage, His Letters and Papers, 1836- 1847 eds. LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, 2 vols. (Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1956), I, p. 127. ’William Goetzmann, The Mountain Man (Cody, Wyoming: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1978), p. 9. ^Dixon Wecter, The Hero in America: A Chronicle o f Hero-Worship (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), p. 476. -V- the kind of man Americans like to admire because he embodies rugged Anglo-American individualism, courage, proper manliness, enterprise, tenacity, resourcefulness, patriotism, and freedom of spirit — all qualities that Americans like to claim as uniquely their own/ Consequently, the mountain man’s image influences Americans’ perceptions of their mythic West, themselves, and their nation. His image conveys various ideals, beliefs, and concerns from the larger culture to its individual members, and vice versa. When the mountain man appears in popular entertainment, seldom are questions asked regarding his actions in a given situation. And even when his behavior fails to distinguish him from other western types, his attire certainly labels him. Buckskin clad, fur capped, and heavily bewhiskered, the mountain man secures his place as the picturesque wanderer of the wilderness.* Few popular figures provide such a wealth of material, in so many quarters of American culture, as does the mountain man. The importance of his image and impact in American history and culture has yet to be thoroughly examined. Before scrutinizing the mountain man’s image, the historical figure from which the mythical one evolved must be defined. A mountain man was simply a beaver trapper, who lived year-round in the Central Rocky Mountains sometime from roughly 1824 to 1840, and ^Ibid., chapter 18, wherein Wecter outlines the traits by which Americans usually choose their heroes. The mountain man possesses most all the requisite traits outlined by Wecter. ^Historian LeRoy R. Hafen has referred to the fur cap and buckskins as "perhaps the only original American costume," making those that wear it American originals themselves and "the best in rugged manhood." See LeRoy R. Hafen and Carl Coke Rister, Western America: The Exploration, Settlement, and Development o f the Region Beyond the Mississippi, 2d ed. (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1950), p. 209. •vi* who was attached to the rendezvous system.® Scholars fiuther define him by distinctions such as nationality (almost exclusively Anglo-American), linguistics (having a unique “mountain parlance,” coarse, metaphorical, jocular, and mono syllabic), or by stereotype (a hero, hedonist, or expectant capitalist).^ Such scholarly definitions have little sway on the mountain man’s popular image. Rather, the mountain man hero is molded by a variety of societal influences, including politics, art, capitalism, nationalism, feelings of masculinity, and hero worship. Recognizing the mountain man's prominence in American culture, J. Frank Dobie remarks that perhaps "hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain Men . [and] one doubts whether any other form of American life at all has been so well covered in ballad. ®The rendezvous system is described in David Wishart, The Fur Trade o f the American IVest, I807-I840. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), chapters 4 and 5; The times and places of the various rendezvous are detailed in Fred R. Gowans, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of the Fur Trade Rendezvous, 1825-1840. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1976); see also LeRoy R. Hafen, ed.. The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade o f the Far JVest, 10 vols., (Glendale: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1965-1972), I, pp. 14-15, 73-176. For a typical definition of the mountain man see Denis McLoughlin, Wild and Woolly: An Encyclopedia o f the Old West (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1996), pp. 363, 522. ^The Anglo-Americanness of mountain men is a foregone conclusion in historical writings. See, for instance, LeRoy R. Hafen, W. Eugene Hollon, and Carl Coke Rister, Western America: The Exploration, Settlement, and Development o f the Region Beyond the Mississippi, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1970), p. 154; and “The Museum of Mountain Man,” Journal o f the West, 36 (January 1997): 92. The unique mountain man speech is examined by Richard C. Poulsen, The Mountain Man Vemacidar: Its Historical Roots, Its Linguistic Nature, and its Literary Uses (N.Y.: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1985), chapter 1. The debate over a mountain man stereotype is outlined succinctly in Harlan H. Hague, “Some Views of the Mountain Man,” The Pacific Historian, 13 (Fall 1969): 81-92, and will be discussed in more detail later. -vii- fiction, biography, [and] history."* Exclude the cowboy's place in American culture and Dobie's words are irrefutable. Other scholars acknowledge