After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km)-wide South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Coming from modest family background, Smith traveled to St. Louis and joined William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry's fur trading company in 1822.

[5] At age 13, 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.

[11] General Ashley and Major Andrew Henry,[d] veterans of the War of 1812, had established a partnership to engage in the fur trade[12] and were looking for "One Hundred" "Enterprising Young Men" to explore and trap in the Rocky Mountains.

[24] Ashley and the rest of the surviving party rode back down the river, ultimately enlisting aid from Colonel Henry Leavenworth who was the commander of Fort Atkinson.

Leaving Fort Kiowa in September, Smith and 10 to 16 men headed west, beginning his first far-western expedition, to make their way overland to the Rocky Mountains.

[35] The two groups met in July on the Sweetwater River, and it was decided that Fitzpatrick and two others would take the furs and the news of the identification of a feasible highway route through the Rockies[g] to Ashley in St.

[36] Scottish-Canadian trapper Robert Stuart, employed by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, had previously discovered the South Pass, in mid-October 1812, while traveling overland to St. Louis from Fort Astoria, but this information was kept secret.

[41] After Fitzpatrick left, Smith and six others, including William Sublette, again crossed South Pass, and in September 1824 encountered a group of Iroquois freemen trappers who had split off from the Hudson's Bay Company Snake Country brigade led by Alexander Ross.

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.

[50] The legendary Buenaventura was thought to be a navigable waterway to the Pacific Ocean possibly providing an alternative to packing loads of furs back to St.

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.

[63] After waiting for almost another month for an exit visa and then spending at least two more weeks breaking the horses they had purchased for the return trip, Smith's party departed the mission communities of California in mid-February 1827.

[66] By early May 1827, Smith and his men had traveled 350 miles (560 km) north looking for the Buenaventura River, but they found no break in the Sierra Nevada range through which it could have flowed from the Rocky Mountains.

[70] After meeting with the only mounted natives that they would encounter until they reached the Salt Lake Valley,[o] they continued east across central Nevada, straight across the Great Basin Desert as the summer heat hit the region.

Smith and the eight surviving men, one badly wounded from the fighting, prepared to make a desperate stand on the west bank of Colorado River, having made a makeshift breastwork out of trees and fashioned lances by attaching butcher knives to light poles.

Yet despite the breach of trust, the governor once again released Smith after several English-speaking residents vouched for him, including John B. R. Cooper and William Edward Petty Hartnell in Monterey.

When 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.

[47] On the night of August 8, 1828, Arthur Black arrived at the gate of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) post at Fort Vancouver, exhausted and almost destitute of clothing.

[112] Smith was leading the caravan on the Santa Fe Trail on May 27, 1831, when he left the group to scout for water near the Lower Spring on the Cimarron River in present-day southwest Kansas.

[114] Most likely, the death of Jedediah Smith occurred in Northern Mexico Territory, south of present-day Ulysses, Grant County, Kansas at Wagon Bed Spring.

[121][ah] In the aftermath of Smith's death, President Andrew Jackson, during his second term in 1836, launched the federally-funded oceanic United States Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, from 1838 to 1842.

"[128] As such, author Tom Clavin describes Smith's life as a kind of parable illustrate God’s munificence to any man willing to keep the Christian faith through the many trials.

[128] All accounts of Smith describe him as strongly self-controlled, never drinking alcohol to excess[aj] or bedding Native American women, indicating he had the discipline often associated with a strict moral code.

[134] Later, during his trek across the Great Basin, he said of the desert indigenes he came upon "children of nature...unintelligent type of beings...They form a connecting link between the animal and intellectual creation..."[ak] Upon returning to Mexican California, even after suffering the Mojave massacre, he continued to try to maintain good relations, punishing two of his men, albeit lightly, who had unnecessarily killed one native and wounded another.

[138] By the time the party reached the Umpqua River in the British-American shared Oregon Country, their tolerance was at an ebb, leading to the ax incident and resulting in disastrous consequences.

[140] In 1853, Peter Skene Ogden[al] had written about the Umpqua massacre in Traits of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader, and the Oregon Pioneers Association and Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote versions of it in 1876 and 1886, respectively.

Five years later, Smith's status as a historical figure was further revived by Harrison Clifford Dale's[an] book,[88]The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829: With the Original Journals, published in 1918.

[aq] Along with the narrative, Sullivan published the portion of Alexander McLeod's journal documenting the search for any surviving members of Smith's party and the recovery of his property after the Umpquah massacre.

[156][at] Another important piece of the Jedediah Smith story was discovered in 1967, when another portion of the 1830–31 narrative (again in Parkman's hand) was found amongst other historical papers in an attic in St.