Alexander Ross’s 1855 narrative, The Fur Hunters of the Far West, provides an indispensable firsthand account of inland fur trade logistics, corporate maneuvers, and territorial diplomacy across the Columbia River basin and the northern Rocky Mountains. Chronicling his service with the North West Company and subsequently the Hudson’s Bay Company, Ross details the establishment and operation of key interior outposts—most notably Fort Nez Percés (Walla Walla), Fort Okanagan, and Spokane House—which were systematically constructed at strategic river confluences, traditional salmon fisheries, and seasonal gathering grounds long stewarded by the Cayuse, Walla Walla, Nez Perce, Spokane, and Syilx (Okanagan) peoples. The text illuminates the profound operational vulnerability of interior fur brigades, showing how overland transport and the grueling Snake River trapping expeditions were utterly dependent on negotiated interdependent alliances with regional Plateau and equestrian nations to secure vital pack horse herds, seasonal dried provisions, and navigational guides. Ross’s granular documentation of river rapids, overland trail corridors, and volatile trade councils exposes the fragile mechanics of early corporate resource extraction, illustrating how the fur companies were forced to superimpose their inland supply networks directly onto an established, deeply defended Indigenous geography.

1 online resource (2 volumes) : map, portrait

Four years after Lewis and Clark stimulated American interest in the far western reaches of the continent, John Jacob Astor, a New York businessman, dispatched an overland expedition to establish a fur-trading post on the Columbia River. A second group traveled by sea aboard the Tonquin, among them Alexander Ross, a clerk in Astor's Pacific Fur Company. Adventures of the First Settlers is a vivid account of the expedition and its struggles to establish a successful trading venture. Ross details the Tonquin's dangerous voyage and documents the Astorians' painstaking struggles to clear the land and build a new trading post. Their settlement, Astoria, became the first American outpost on the Pacific Slope. Although the Astorians were aggressive in expanding their presence in the Columbia River country, their enterprise was short-lived. Ross chronicles their competition with the rival North West Company for furs and empire, the colorful and hazardous exploits of the fur trappers, and the eventual transfer of Astoria to the north West Company in the midst of the War of 1812. His detailed descriptions of the Columbia River Indians reveal Ross to be an astute and informed observer. In a new introduction to a book he calls "one of the charter literary documents for the Pacific Northwest," historian William Robbins considers the relationship between exploration, commerce, and empire in the Astorians' experience. An appendix containing a Chinook vocabulary and a table of weather conditions at Astoria in 1811.

xv, 352 pages, 1 unnumbered folded leaf of plates + 16 pages advertisements : 1 map ; 19 cm