Snake Country Expedition Launched

The earliest fur trapping expeditions in the Snake Country of present-day Idaho and Montana were led by a Scotsman, Donald Mackenzie, on behalf of the North West Company.

Mackenzie's "brigades" of five dozen or so trappers and their families revolutionized the fur trade in the Americas, which were previously based on established trading posts in permanent locations.

Beginning in 1824, these brigades roamed the wilderness for a year or more in pursuit of beaver pelts, either by trapping or trading with native Indians. These ventures covered most of southern Idaho and parts of eastern Oregon, northern Utah, and western Wyoming and were responsible for many of the place names in the region.

Alexander Ross, the most literate of the brigade leaders, led the best documented Snake River Expedition in 1824, a venture generally considered a failure. His journals and subsequent memoirs secured his place in history.

"Ross had not trapped animals before. He had first come West as a fur trader, not a trapper," John Phillip Reid notes in his history, Forging a Fur Empire. "Trapping with the Snake country expedition was his first exerience hunting animals commerically - a new experience for him."

Ross also lacked leadership experience and the expedition was plagued with problems, from horses that could not keep up to malfunctioning traps. He had little respect for most of his charges and they apparently responded to his commands only when it suited them.

"A more discordant, headstrong, ill-designing set of rascals than form this camp God never permitted together in the fur trade," Ross wrote in his journal.

Reid assesses Ross' failures as an inability to communicate effectively with his charges or his superiors. He understood that his men needed strong leadership, but as often as not he did not lead them; they led him.

In his journal entries, Ross frankly admits to his failings. "It may be asked why I did not Command them? I answer to Command when we have the power of enforcing the Command, does very well, but otherwise to Command is one thing, to obey is another.

"This morning I proposed that a small party should go on a trip of discovery for beaver across the range of mountains... For this trip, I could only get three men."

For the next six yearly expeditions, Ross was replaced by Peter Skein Ogden, arguably the most successful of the brigade leaders.

"What Ross was unable to effect by reason, Ogden accomplished by leadership and the threat of his fists," Reid explains. "He would turn the Snake country expeditions from motley bands of stragglers into disciplined companies operating as units, wintering in the frozen valleys of the Snake River, traveling over vast areas into American and Mexican territories, and losing few men in hostile combat."