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Failure on the Columbia: Nathaniel Wyeth's Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company Bradford R. Cole Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth was an important participant in a transitional period of American westward expansion. As a thirty-year-old businessman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wyeth in the early 1830s was lured by the West and the potential profits to be made in that part of the country. In 1832 he became a fur trader, making the first of two trips to Oregon. Before entering the fur trade he helped in managing the family-owned Fresh Pond Hotel in Cambridge, and during the winter months, he harvested ice from nearby Cambridge ponds. Wyeth's involvement in the ice business was important to his future. His invention of labor-saving devices in the 1820s earned him the respect of Boston ice merchant Fredric Tudor and an entry into Boston business circles. This entry in the short term, gave him the capital-and the access to capital-that he needed to finance his western enterprises, and in the long term made him a respected New England businessman.} In 1831, the 29-year-old Wyeth turned his energies westward. In June he attended the Boston lectures of the noted Oregon booster Hall J. Kelley. He not only attended Kelley's Boston addresses but enlisted as a captain in Kelley's 1832 Oregon expedition. The two men, however, had different motives for going west. Kelley wanted to be part of what he saw as the American vanguard for settlement in the Oregon country. Wyeth, on the other hand, desired entrepreneurial opportunities. As a result of these differences, Wyeth quickly became disillusioned with Kelley's undertaking when the latter repeatedly delayed his departure date and vacillated on the question of whether women and children should join the company. Due to the uncertainty of Kelley's organization, Wyeth withdrew and formed his own company in 1832.2 This marked the beginning of a five-year period during which Wyeth attempted to become a power broker in the fur trade. Before he finished, he would outfit two trading expeditions, spend five years exploring the Rocky Mountains, and lose $20,000.3 Wyeth's western exploits give him a prominence in the literature of the western fur trade. Ironically, however, this literature recognizes him more for the lasting impact he made upon western settlement, and specifically, for the people 269 BRADFORD R. COLE whom he brought to Oregon: naturalists, a school teacher, the first Protestant missionaries, and the many men of his company who remained in Oregon and elsewhere as settlers. The construction of Fort Hall in present-day southeastern Idaho, and of Fort William on present-day Sauvie Island in the Willamette River are other notable contributions. Wyeth's presence also aided American claims to the Northwest against the British. While most authors agree upon Wyeth's accomplishments, confusion and disagreement arise in studying him as a fur trader, and specifically in understanding the causes of his economic failure. These disagreements are aggravated by the shortage of primary sources. Although Wyeth left relatively complete records about his fur trading enterprise, enough gaps occur that some guesswork has been necessary in interpreting his role. Most critical is the lack of source material from his last eighteen months of business, 1835-1837. An excellent and little-used source that fills this gap is the "'Letter Book of Henry Hall."4 Hall was the oldest partner of Wyeth's Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company and the person for whom Fort Hall was named. Strangely, Hall's "'Letter Book," actually a copy book prepared by or for this prominent stockholder, has been used only once in the literature-in an article written by Clement Eaton in 1935, entitled "'Nathaniel Wyeth's Oregon Expeditions."'5 Although others have used items from the "'Hall Letter Book," they all cite Eaton's article and not the "Letter Book'" itself. The documents contained in the "Letter Book'" include the company's articles of incorporation, instructions to principal members of the expedition, directions on how to run trapping parties, reports from Wyeth, and letters from other employees, five of which were written at Fort Hall. Of additional importance is the fact that several of the letters were written after the fall of 1835. No other correspondence from Wyeth or his employees survived from this period.6 The most important aspect of the "Hall Letter Book" is the description of a rift that grew between Wyeth and second-in-command Joseph...

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