Editing Mountain man (section)

==History==
{{further|Fur trade in Montana}}
Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s (with a peak population in the 1830s). About 3,000 of them ranged the mountains between 1820 and 1840, the peak beaver-harvesting period. [[John Colter|John Colter's]] solo exploration of 1807-1808 made him one of the first Mountain men. While there were many [[Free agent|free trappers]], most mountain men were employed by major fur companies. The life of a company man was almost militarized. The men had mess groups, hunted and trapped in [[brigade]]s, and always reported to the head of the trapping party. This man was called a "boosway", a bastardization of the [[French language|French]] term ''[[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]]''. He was the leader of the brigade and the head trader.
[[File:Fort Nez Perces Trading 1841 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Fur trading at [[Fort Nez Percé]] in 1841]]
[[Donald McKenzie (explorer)|Donald Mackenzie]], representing the [[North West Company]], held a [[rendezvous (fur trade)|rendezvous]] in the [[Boise River]] Valley in 1819.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.idahohistory.net/Reference%20Series/0444.pdf |title=Idahohistory.net |publisher=Idahohistory.net |date=2010-07-07 |access-date=2012-10-01}}</ref> The [[Rocky Mountain Rendezvous|rendezvous system]] was later implemented by [[William Henry Ashley]] of the [[Rocky Mountain Fur Company]], whose company representatives would haul supplies to specific mountain locations in the spring, engage in trading with trappers, and bring [[Fur|pelts]] back to communities on the [[Missouri River|Missouri]] and [[Mississippi River|Mississippi]] rivers, like [[St. Louis]], in the fall. Ashley sold his business to the outfit of [[Jedediah Smith|Smith]], [[David Edward Jackson|Jackson]], and [[William Sublette|Sublette]]. He continued to earn revenue by selling that firm their supplies. This system of rendezvous with trappers continued when other firms, particularly the [[American Fur Company]] owned by [[John Jacob Astor]], entered the field.

The annual rendezvous was often held at Horse Creek on the [[Green River (Colorado River tributary)|Green River]], now called the [[Upper Green River Rendezvous Site]], near present-day [[Pinedale, Wyoming]]. Another popular site in the same general area was [[Pierre's Hole]]. By the mid-1830s, it attracted 450 to 500 men annually: essentially all the American trappers and traders working in the Rockies as well as numerous Native Americans. 

After achieving an American [[monopoly]] by 1830, Astor got out of the fur business before its decline. In the late 1830s, the Canadian-based [[Hudson's Bay Company]] (HBC) instituted several policies to undercut the American fur trade. During the same years, fashion in Europe shifted away from the formerly popular beaver hats; at the same time, the animal had become over-hunted. The HBC's annual [[Snake River]] Expedition was transformed into a trading enterprise. Beginning in 1834, it visited the American rendezvous to buy furs at low prices. The HBC was able to offer manufactured trade goods at prices far below that with which American fur companies could compete. The last rendezvous was held in 1840, when the HBC, along with a decline in demand for and supply of beaver, had effectively put all American fur traders out of business.  

By 1841, the American Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company were in ruins. By 1846, only some 50 American trappers still worked in the Snake River country, compared to 500 to 600 in 1826. Soon after the strategic victory by the HBC, the Snake River route was used by emigrants as the Oregon Trail, which brought a new form of competition. Former trappers earned money as guides or hunters for the emigrant parties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mackie |first=Richard Somerset |title=Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843 |year=1997 |publisher=University of British Columbia (UBC) Press |location=Vancouver |isbn=0-7748-0613-3 |pages=107–111}}</ref>
[[File:Alfred Jacob Miller - The Trapper's Bride - Walters 37194012.jpg|thumb|''The Trapper's Bride'' shows a [[American Fur Company|trapper]], Francois, paying $600 in trade goods for an Indian woman to be his wife, ca. 1837, by [[Alfred Jacob Miller]].]]
A second fur trading and supply center grew up in [[Taos, New Mexico|Taos]] in what is today [[New Mexico]]. This trade attracted numerous French Americans from Louisiana and some French Canadian trappers, in addition to Anglo-Americans. Some New Mexican residents also pursued the beaver trade, as Mexican citizens initially had some legal advantages. Trappers and traders in the [[Southwestern United States|Southwest]] covered territory that was generally inaccessible to the large fur companies. It included parts of New Mexico, Nevada, California and central and southern Utah. After the decline in beaver and the fur trade, with some emigrants to the West using the [[Mormon Trail]], former trappers found work as guides and hunters for the traveling parties.

After the short-lived [[Pacific Fur Company]] was [[Liquidation|liquidated]], British-Canadian companies controlled the fur trade in the [[Pacific Northwest]], first under the [[North West Company]] (NWC) and then the HBC. Both companies undertook numerous measures to prevent American fur traders from competing with them west of the Rocky Mountains, especially in the upper [[Snake River]] country. After the HBC took over operations in the Pacific Northwest in 1821, American fur traders in the Snake River country quickly went out business and moved on.<ref name=" Mackie 1997 64–65">{{cite book |last=Mackie |first=Richard Somerset |title=Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843 |year=1997 |publisher=University of British Columbia (UBC) Press |location=Vancouver |isbn=0-7748-0613-3 |pages=64–65}}</ref>

This halted American expansion into the region. After 1825, few American trappers worked west of the Rocky Mountains, and those who did generally found it unprofitable. According to historian Richard Mackie, this policy of the HBC forced American trappers to remain in the Rocky Mountains, which gave rise to the term "mountain men".<ref name=" Mackie 1997 64–65"/>

Mountain men were instrumental in opening up the various emigrant trails (widened into wagon roads) allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains traveling over roads explored and in many cases, physically improved by the mountain men and the big fur companies originally to serve the mule train based inland fur trade. By the time two new international treaties in early 1846 and early 1848<ref name="dispute" /> officially settled new western coastal territories on the United States and spurred a large upsurge in migration, the days of mountain men making a good living by fur trapping had largely ended. The fur industry was failing because of over-trapping. Fortuitously, America's ongoing [[Manifest destiny|western migration]] by wagon trains with the goal of claiming cheap lands in the west was building rapidly from a trickle of settlers from 1841's opening of the Oregon Trail to a flood of emigrants headed west by 1847–49 and thereafter well into the later 1880s.

[[File:Seth Kinman.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Seth Kinman]], a notable 19th century mountain man who claimed to have hunted down around 800 grizzly bears]]
[[File:Mariano Medina 2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Mariano Medina (mountain man)|Mariano Medina]]]]

By the time the fur trade began to collapse in the 1840s, motivating them to change jobs, the trails they had explored and turned into reliable mule trails and improved gradually into wagon-capable freight roads combined to allow them to work as guides and scouts. As the fur trade declined, mountain man [[Robert Newell (politician)|Robert Newell]] told [[Jim Bridger]]: "[W]e are done with this life in the mountains{{mdash}}done with wading in beaver dams, and freezing or starving alternately{{mdash}}done with Indian trading and Indian fighting. The fur trade is dead in the Rocky Mountains, and it is no place for us now if ever it was."<ref>Roberts, David. ''A newer world: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont and the claiming of the American west'', New York: Touchstone. 2001, p. 98. {{ISBN|0-684-83482-0}}.</ref><ref>Sides, Hampton, ''Blood and Thunder'', Doubleday. 2006, pp. 33-34. {{ISBN|0-385-50777-1}}.</ref> At the same time the great push west along the newly opened Oregon Trail built up from a trickle of settlers in 1841 to a steady stream in 1844–46 and then became a flood as the highly organized Mormon migration exploited the road to the [[Great Salt Lake]] discovered by mountain man Jim Bridger in 1847–48. The migration would explode in 1849's "[[California Gold Rush#Forty-niners|The Forty-Niners]]" in response to the discovery of gold in California in 1848.