Ashley's Prudence

William Ashley

Prudence is no fun. It's girl scout stuff really. Making sure that things are done right, done thoughtfully, prudence clears the room of wild exuberance and joy. But then learning prudence almost always is worth it.

As it was for a man named William Ashley. History has almost totally forgotten him, but once upon a time in the colonization of North America, Ashley played a significant role. It was his idea to alter the course of human events by hiring 100 adventurers to become trappers through the land Jefferson had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Ashley put together one hundred men he thought he could trust and brought them up here into America's frontier.

William Ashley was a point man for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, who'd done what most other traders had been doing to trade with Native bands. Pots and pans were a hot item, as were beads, as well as other commodities were similarly beloved--guns and liquor.

Ashley learned quickly that guns could pull a good price, but a year or so after unloading rifles on the Arikara, he also learned he had to exercise some prudence in trading. A year after watching those rifles pass into Native bands, those very same rifles most definitely came back to haunt him. Twenty of his husky mountain men were killed in a rightly famous fight that took place just upriver from Mobridge, South Dakota, the first big fight between white men and red men west of the Mississippi. 

Why?--a perfect storm of reasons. First, the Arikara had already been mistreated by the legions of white men streaming into what had been their neighborhood; second, the chief's own son came back dead from hunting with the enemy, the story of his death simply unconvincing; third, some of Ashley's men had flagrantly abused some of the Arikara women; and finally, the Rees attacked because they had rifles and ammo they got from none other than Ashley himself. 

Did he learn? Yes. In his journal, he wrote, "“Trade what you can afford to lose; never trade what can be turned against you.” That's prudence, "the ability  to govern or discipline oneself by reason." Not fun, but good, smart stuff like cod liver oil. 

The Arikara were up high on the banks of the river, in a perfect position to pick off the aliens, and they did, Ashley's men taking to the river, where some drowned while others took the current downstream until they dared take cover in the bushes lining the Missouri, sometimes weeks later, or so the story goes.

Sometime later, one of those survivors, a man named Hugh Glass got in a fight with a bear, got himself sliced up like a tomato but somehow lived to tell about it. Jim Bridger's map-like memory helped him find his way around country that had to have seemed as wide and eternal as anything anyone had ever seen. Jedidiah Smith offered up a public prayer some claim to have been uttered in the very first Christian service west of the Mississippi, which happened to be a funeral.

Sometime later--not long--the stories continued to pile up. How the west was won is a book with a multitude of chapters, big as the west itself, all of which add up, for better and for worse, to our story.