70 Facts About Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Smith led the first documented exploration from the Salt Lake frontier to the Colorado River.

In March 1831, while in St Louis, Smith requested of Secretary of War John H Eaton a federally-funded exploration of the West, but to no avail.

Jedediah Smith informed Eaton that he was completing a map of the West derived from his own journeys.

Jedediah Smith received adequate English instruction, learned some Latin, and was taught how to write decently.

Around 1810, Jedediah Smith's father was caught up in a legal issue involving counterfeit currency after which the elder Jedediah Smith moved his family west to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

At age 13, Jedediah Smith worked as a clerk on a Lake Erie freighter, where he learned business practices and probably met traders returning from the far west to Montreal.

Jedediah Smith provided Clark, who had become superintendent of Indian affairs, much information from his own expeditions to the West.

In 1817, the Jedediah Smith family moved westward to Ohio and settled in Green Township in what is present-day Ashland County.

In late spring, Jedediah Smith started up the Missouri on the keelboat Enterprize, which sank three weeks into the journey.

Forty Ashley men, including Jedediah Smith, were caught in a vulnerable position, and 12 were killed in the ensuing battle.

Jedediah Smith had been appointed commander of one of the two squads of the Ashley-Henry men and was thereafter known as "Captain Jedediah Smith".

Jedediah Smith was tackled to the ground by the grizzly, breaking his ribs.

The only known portrait of Jedediah Smith, painted after his death in 1831, showed the long hair he wore over the side of his head to hide his scars.

In 1824, Jedediah Smith sent an expedition to find an expedient route through the Rocky Mountains.

When communicating with the Crows, one of Jedediah Smith's men made a unique map, and the Crows were able to show Jedediah Smith and his men the direction to the South Pass.

Jedediah Smith later wrote a letter to Secretary of War John Eaton in 1830 making the location of the South Pass public information.

Jedediah Smith told the Iroquois they could get better prices for their furs by selling to American traders and accompanied the brigade back to its base at Flathead Post in Montana.

Jedediah Smith then accompanied the brigade led by Peter Skene Ogden back southeast, leaving Flathead Post in December 1824.

Several of the deserters were among the Iroquois trappers Jedediah Smith had assisted in September 1824.

Jedediah Smith returned to St Louis for a time, where he asked Robert Campbell to join the company as a clerk.

The previous spring, Jedediah Smith had searched for rivers flowing to the Pacific west and northwest of the Great Salt Lake.

Jedediah Smith hired two refugees from the Spanish missions in California to guide them west.

The next day, the rest of Jedediah Smith's men arrived at the mission, and that night the head of the garrison at the mission confiscated all their guns.

Echeandia, surprised and suspicious of the Americans' unauthorized entrance into California, had Jedediah Smith arrested, believing him to be a spy.

Jedediah Smith requested permission to travel north to the Columbia River on a coastal route, where known paths could take his party back to United States territory.

Cunningham of Boston on the ship Courier, Jedediah Smith was released by Echeandia to reunite with his men.

Jedediah Smith boarded the Courier sailing from San Diego to San Pedro, to meet his men.

The party returned on the path it had arrived, but once outside the Mexican settlements, Jedediah Smith convinced himself he had complied with Echeandia's order to leave by the same route he had entered, and the party veered north crossing over into the Central Valley.

Jedediah Smith would take two men and some extra horses to get to the rendezvous as quickly as he could and return to his party with more men later in the year, and the group would continue on to the Columbia.

Jedediah Smith left to rejoin the men he had left in California almost immediately after the rendezvous.

Jedediah Smith was accompanied by 18 men and two French-Canadian women, following much of the same route as the previous year.

The men still had five guns among them, and as the Mojave began to approach, Jedediah Smith ordered his men to fire on those within range.

Unlike in San Gabriel, they were coolly received by the priests at Mission San Jose, who had already received warning of Jedediah Smith's renewed presence in the area.

Jedediah Smith's party visited the settlements at Monterey and Yerba Buena.

Jedediah Smith became the first explorer to reach the Oregon Country overland by traveling north on the California coast.

When Jedediah Smith's party left Mexican Alta California and entered the Oregon Country, the Treaty of 1818 allowed joint occupation between Britain and the United States.

One of them stole an ax, and Jedediah Smith's party treated some of the Umpqua very harshly to force the thief to return it.

Jedediah Smith believed himself to be the only survivor of the men at camp but did not know of the fate of Smith and the two others.

When Jedediah Smith returned to Fort Vancouver ten days later, he met with Governor Simpson to discuss the possibility of the HBC buying Jedediah Smith's recovered property.

Jedediah Smith remained at Fort Vancouver until March 12,1829, when he and Arthur Black traveled back east to meet up with his partners.

In 1829, Captain Jedediah Smith personally organized a fur trade expedition into the Blackfeet territory.

Jedediah Smith was able to capture a good cache of beaver before being repulsed by hostile Blackfeet.

The letter included a description of Fort Vancouver and described how the British were in the process of making a new fort at the time of Jedediah Smith's visit in 1829.

Jedediah Smith believed the British were attempting to establish a permanent settlement in the Oregon Country.

Jedediah Smith had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio.

Jedediah Smith bought a house on First Avenue in St Louis to be shared with his brothers.

Jedediah Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St Louis.

The partners' busy schedules in St Louis found them and Samuel Parkman making a map of their discoveries in the West, to which Jedediah Smith was the major contributor.

Jedediah Smith requested that Reuben Holmes, a West Point graduate and military officer, would lead the expedition.

Jedediah Smith tried to negotiate with the Comanche, but they surrounded him in preparation for an attack.

Jedediah Smith attempted to conciliate with them until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the left shoulder with an arrow.

Jedediah Smith fought back, ultimately killing the chief of the warriors.

The version written by Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, in a letter to their brother Ira four months after Jedediah's death says that Jedediah had killed the "head Chief," but nothing about any other Comanche being wounded or killed.

One of the expedition's accomplishments was the exploration of the Pacific Northwest and to lay claim on the Oregon Country, which Jedediah Smith had previously explored, dominated by the British Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River.

The federally-funded overland exploration of the West that Smith had requested in 1831 took place starting in 1842 commanded by Lieutenant John C Fremont under President John Tyler and President James K Polk.

In 1846, the disputed joint occupancy of Britain and the United States of the Oregon Country where Jedediah Smith stayed at Fort Vancouver was ended by the Oregon Treaty.

Jedediah Smith had a dry, not raucous, sense of humor and was not known to use the profanity common to his peers.

Jedediah Smith owned at least two slaves, which conflicted with his northern Methodist upbringing, and his behavior was not always honorable when dealing with those he considered his antagonists.

Jedediah Smith was known to be physically strong, cool under pressure, extremely skilled at surviving in the wild, and possessed extraordinary leadership skills.

The Maidu were fearful and defensive, and Jedediah Smith's men killed at least seven of them upon his orders when they refused peaceful advances and demonstrated aggressive behaviors.

Jedediah Smith later wrote that they were "the lowest intermediate link between man and the Brute creation".

Recollection of a Septuagenarian by William Waldo, published by the Missouri Historical Society in 1880, discussed Jedediah Smith, focusing on hearsay evidence of his piety.

The first known publication solely about Jedediah Smith was in the 1896 Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California.

Jedediah Smith again was not listed in the 1906 volume 9 publication of American Biographical Society's Biographical Dictionary of America, edited by Rossiter Johnson.

In 1912, an article about Jedediah Smith written by a grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Jedediah Smith of Meade, Kansas, was published by the Kansas Historical Society.

In 1934, Sullivan published the remnants, documenting Smith's travels in 1821 and 1822 and from June 1827 until the Umpqua massacre a year later, in The Travels of Jedediah Smith, giving a new documented perspective of Smith's explorations.

The Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 17, edited by Dumas Malone, published in 1935, contains an article on Jedediah Smith authored by Joseph Schafer.

Jedediah Smith was known for his many systematic recorded observations on nature and topography.

Jedediah Smith's expeditions raised doubts about the existence of the legendary Buenaventura River.

Jedediah Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific West maps.