page_title: Jedediah Smith
section_title: Smith joins "Ashley's Hundred"
hierarchical_section_title: Jedediah Smith / Smith joins "Ashley's Hundred"
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Missouri River watershed. Showing ecoregions from FEOW (Freshwater Ecoregions of the World), World Wildlife Fund, Nature Conservancy.
context_page_description: Jedediah Strong Smith, was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the North American West, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile-wide South Pass as the dominant point of crossing the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
  Coming from a modest family background, Smith traveled to St. Louis and joined William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry's fur trading company in 1822. Smith led the first documented exploration from the Salt Lake frontier to the Colorado River. From there, Smith's party became the first United States citizens to cross the Mojave Desert into what is now the state of California but which at that time was part of Mexico. On the return journey, Smith and his companions were likewise the first U. S. citizens to explore and cross the Sierra Nevada and the treacherous Great Basin Desert. In the following year, Smith and his companions were the first U.
context_section_description: Coming from a family of very modest means, Smith struck out to make his own way. He may have left his family in search of a trade or employment a year prior to their settlement in Green Township.  In 1822, Smith was living in St. Louis.  The same year Smith responded to an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette placed by Gen. William H. Ashley.   General Ashley and Major Andrew Henry, veterans of the War of 1812, had established a partnership to engage in the fur trade and were looking for "One Hundred" "Enterprising Young Men" to explore and trap in the Rocky Mountains. Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Clark had granted Ashley-Henry license to trade with Native Americans in the Upper Missouri and he actively encouraged them to compete with the powerful British fur trade in the Pacific Northwest.  Smith, now a 6-foot-tall, blue-eyed 23-year-old with a commanding presence, impressed General Ashley to hire him. In late spring, Smith started up the Missouri River on the keel boat Enterprize, which sank three weeks into the journey. Smith and the other men waited at the site of the wreck for a replacement boat, hunting and foraging for food. Ashley brought up another boat with an additional 46 men and upon proceeding upriver, Smith got his first glimpse of the western frontier, coming into contact with the Sioux and Arikara. On October 1, Smith finally reached Fort Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, which had just been built by Major Henry and the men that he had led up earlier. Smith and some other men continued up the Missouri to the mouth of the Musselshell River in central Montana, where they built a camp from which to trap through the winter.
caption: Regions of the Missouri River Watershed.
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