Fremont
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">uber1</font></div><div><a href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-3382">https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-3382</a><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><a href="https://docs.idahopower.com/pdfs/relicensing/hellscanyon/hellspdfs/techappendices/Cultural/e04_12.pdf"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://docs.idahopower.com/pdfs/relicensing/hellscanyon/hellspdfs/techappendices/Cultural/e04_12.pdf</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">...In the early-1840s, pathmarker John C. Fremont, led two
scientific expeditions into the far west. The purpose of these
expeditions was to map and refine the limits of boundaries of the
Oregon Trail (Chittenden 1986:458-482; Cline 1963:208-216). Or,
the purpose as he saw it was to explore “...military and
geographical, principally to connect, on the line of
communication usually traveled, the frontiers of Missouri with
the mouth of the Columbia.”</span> The federal government sanctioned
and funded both expeditions, as opposed to Bonneville’s five year
expedition, which was paid for privately through New York
investors. <b>Fremont’s first expedition explored the Pike’s Peak,
South Pass, and the Wind River mountain range in 1842</b> (Spence
1998:401; cf., Fremont 1988:9-101).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> <b>His second expedition, 1843-
1844, led him through southern Idaho along the Snake River and
overland through northeast Oregon before going south to
California and east along the Old Spanish Trail</b>. On October 7th,
1843, Fremont stayed on the Boise River. His journal entry for
this day reads as follows:
...There were several Indian encampments scattered along the
river; and a number of their inhabitants , in the course of
the evening, came to the camp on horseback with dried and
fresh fish to trade. The evening was clear, and the
temperature at sunset 57 (degrees). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time of the first occupation of this region by
parties engaged in the fur trade, a small party of men under
the command of ------- Reid, constituting all the garrison
of a little fort on this river, were surprised and massacred
by the Indians; and to this event the stream owes its
occasional name of Reid’s river (Fremont 1988:173).
On the 8th of October, Fremont came down the Boise River to <b>Fort
Boise, a trading post owned the Hudson’s Bay Company and run by
Mr. Payette, a noted fur-trapper who traveled with Hunt on his
overland expedition for Jacob Astor. </b>Fremont (1988:173) states:
...During the day [8th] we remained here, there were
considerable numbers of miserable half-naked Indians around
the fort, who had arrived from the neighboring mountains.
During the summer, the only subsistence of these peoples is
derived from the salmon, of which they are not provident
enough to lay up a sufficient store for winter, during which
many of them die from absolute starvation. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">with a large body of water and a smooth current; although we
hear the roar, and see below us the commencement of rapids
where it enters among the hills. It forms here a deep bay,
with a low sand island in the midst; and its course among
the mountains is agreeably exchanged for the black volcanic
rock.
On October 13th, Fremont writes about using the term “Great
Basin” to designate:
...the intermediate region between the Rocky mountains and
the next range, containing many lakes, with their own system
of rivers and creeks, (of which the Great Salt is the
principal,) and which have no connexion with the ocean, or
the great rivers which flow into it. The Great Basin is yet
to be adequately explored.
Leaving entirely the Snake river, which is said
henceforth to pursue its course through canons, amidst rocky
and impracticable mountains, where there is no possibility
of travelling with animals, we ascended a long and somewhat
steep hill; and, crossing the dividing ridge, came down into
the valley of Burnt river, which here looks like a hole
among the hills (Fremont 1988:175). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fremont’s party, then, goes in a north by northwest
direction across the Blue Mountains, crossing the Powder, Grand
Ronde, Umatilla, and Walla-Walla rivers descending in the
Columbia river basin. As the above passages indicates they had
an apparently shallow and capricious interpretation of the Snakes
or Shoshones lifestyle. His comments about starvation and
cannibalism among the Snake or Shoshone groups is remarkable for
its naivety and assumption (Fremont 1988:174). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starvation and
cannibalism have occurred in both Indian and non-Indian groups
but always in extreme situations with unusual mitigating
circumstances. Recent research (Clemmer 1996; Myers 1990)
indicates that cannibalism is as repugnant and loathsome to the
Shoshone or Snake people as it is to their non-Indian
counterparts. Compared to someone like John Townsend, Fremont
exhibits an extreme ethnocentric attitude towards these Native
groups. What comments Fremont does make for this area and its
people are not detailed enough to have major consequences for
ethnographic research.
<b>With Fremont’s exploration of southern Idaho and Oregon,
there started a mass immigration along the “Oregon Trail.” ...</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div>