How A Mountain Explorer First Laid Down Path Through the Rockies to California

The 1824 attack by a grizzly bear on mountain man Jedediah Smith left his head permanently marred. Boston Public Library. CC0 BY 2.0

It was the fall of 1824, and a company of trappers was leading pack mules single file through a stand of brush along the Cheyenne River when the lead man came face-to-face with a grizzly bear. Before he could raise and fire his gun, the bear swung one paw into his side, tearing the flesh, breaking several ribs, and knocking him to the ground. As he tried to fight back, the grizzly seized his victim’s head between his jaws, his teeth mauling flesh and hair. In another instant, the grizzly released him, turned, and raced back into the brush.

His stunned companions gathered around the blood-covered man they called “Captain.” Part of his scalp was torn loose, and one ear was ripped nearly away. As they debated what to do, the Captain told them to find fresh water for a camp and to see if they could locate a needle and a thread.

Drawing of Smith created from memory by a friend around 1835, after his death. Public Domain

Once the sewing kit was found, it fell to young James Clyman to stitch up his comrade’s wounds. Nearly 50 years later, he related how, following his captain’s directions, he repaired those gashes as best he could, but then expressed his doubts that the ear could be reattached. With the Captain urging him to make the attempt, Clyman would remember, “I put in my needle, stitching it through and through and over and over, laying the lacerated parts together as nice as I could with my hands.”

With this gruesome repair completed, the Captain managed to mount his horse and ride into the camp they’d set up a mile away, “where we pitched a tent, the only one we had, and made him as comfortable as circumstances would permit.” Within two weeks, he was checking his beaver traps, his wounds healing, though the terrible scars on his head remained for the rest of his life. “This gave us a lesson of the character of the grizzly bear,” Clyman wrote, “which we did not forget.”

A Life of Adventure

That indomitable captain was the appropriately named Jedediah Strong Smith (1799–1831). He was born in New York state, but his family moved about frequently in his adolescence, spending time in Pennsylvania and Ohio. As a youth, Smith learned to read and write, and he became enamored of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s 1814 account of their travels across the continent. Along with his Bible, he would carry these books on his adventures west.

A few years later, while working on a Lake Erie ship, he met trappers returning from the West with their beaver pelts. Their stories cemented his desire to head into the wilderness, and like his heroes Lewis and Clark, he determined to become an explorer. In 1822, this 6-foot-3-inch, strapping young man signed on to a beaver trapping expedition on the Missouri River.

The geographical knowledge of Smith, as recorded by George Gibbs, maps the Rocky Mountain Exploring Expedition of 1842 along with Oregon and Northern California from 1843 to 1844. The map details Smith’s information on the numbers of Native American warriors in certain places, the limits of the buffalo range, how far salmon could ascend the river, and where the mountains had perpetual snow cover. Public Domain

During the nine years that Smith explored the American West, working in the fur trade to support himself during his travels, his encounter with the grizzly wasn’t the only time his life was in danger. Several times, he and his companions fought desperate battles with bands of Native Americans. Water and food were often scarce, and extreme weather could bring dire consequences. When they were crossing the desert of the Great Basin, for instance, they once buried themselves in the sand to escape the deadly heat.

Eventually, death caught up with the mountain man. On a journey to Santa Fe, Smith had ridden off searching for water for his party when a band of Comanches ambushed and killed him. Ironically, he had intended this trek to be his last, and he had even purchased a house and land in St. Louis.

Mountain-Man Trailblazer

Those nine years of exploring the West brought several accomplishments and major discoveries. Smith traveled twice the distance as had Lewis and Clark when they crossed the country. He commanded the first group of men to travel overland from the east to California. Making his way through the Sierra Nevada and across the Mojave Desert to the Great Salt Lake, he was the first American to return on an inland route from California. He also traveled the entire length of that state and journeyed from southern Colorado all the way to northern Montana. Perhaps most importantly, acting on information given him by Indians, he discovered the South Pass, which permitted wagon travel through the Rocky Mountains into California.

Jedediah Smith stood out from his fellow mountain men in other ways. He neither drank nor used tobacco. He refrained from bragging, bore himself with gravitas, and was a devout Christian, often giving himself over to prayer and meditation.

“Scouts Climbing a Mountain” by Frederic Remington, 1891. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Public Domain

For decades after his death, Smith’s accomplishments lacked the recognition of other renowned backwoodsmen like Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Jim Bridger. He had shared maps and stories with other hunters and trappers, but those maps and his journals were never found after his death.

Today, however, many who know his history regard him as one of the greatest of American trailblazers. More than 30 monuments mark his wanderings, California’s Jedediah Smith Redwoods Park pays him homage, and the Jedediah Smith Society in Berkeley, California, exists to honor his memory and encourage research into his life and influence.

“Bring me men to match my mountains,” begins Sam Walter Foss’s 1894 poem.

Jedediah Strong Smith was one of those men.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.