History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

SMITH AND WOLFSKILL. 23
honor of the president. After ten clays' march, still in
a south-westerly direction, through the country of the
Pah Utes, he recrosses the same stream, and after
two days comes to the junction of the Adams with
what he calls the Seedskeeder, or Siskadee, river, 6 a
stream full of shallows and rapids and flowing through
a sterile country. Then he reaches a fertile wooded
valley which belongs to the Amajabes, or Mojaves,
where the party rests fifteen days, meeting with the
kindest treatment from the natives, who provide food
and horses. Thence they are guided by two neophytes
westward through a desert country, and reach
the mission of San Gabriel in December, their appearance
causing no small commotion in California.
After many strange adventures, fully narrated in my
History of California, Smith works his way northward
up the San Joaquin Valley, and in May 1827
crosses the Sierra Nevada and returns eastward to
Great Salt Lake. With Jedediah Smith, during
some part of his stay in Utah, was Thomas L. Smith,
whom we must immortalize in history as Pegleg
Smith. He did not possess a very estimable character,
as, I am sorry to say, few of his class did in those
days. The leaders of American fur companies, how-
ever, were exceptions, and in points of intelligence,
integrity, and daring were in no wise behind their
British brethren. 7
.
From south-east to north-west a portion of Utah
was traversed in the autumn of 1830 by a trapping
party under William Wolfskill. The company was
fitted out in New Mexico, and the great valley of
California was their objective point. Wolfskill had
been a partner of Ewing Young, who was then in
California. Leaving Taos in September they struck
6 The Adams now is clearly the Rio Virgen, and the Seedskeeder, or Siskadee,
the Colorado. See Hist. XortJuccst Coast, ii. 583, this series.
7
V. W. Crawford, Nar., Mi?., 27, says he saw Pegleg Smith in 1847
on Ham Fork, in a beautiful valley of the Bear River Mountains, where he
then lived with his native wife arda few savage retainers.