William H. Ashley, with his partner Andrew Henry, owned a fur trading company based in Saint Louis, Missouri. Prior to the period covered by these papers, he had lost a fortune in an ill-fated attempt to establish a trapping business on the upper Missouri river. His new plan was trap the region to the south, just over the divide. The previous year, an Ashley-Henry party led by Jedediah Smith had crossed the continental divide at what came to be known as South Pass and found the valley of the Green river to be rich with beaver. Consequently, the remainder of Ashley's fur company left St. Louis and made their way up the Platte. Ashley left two documents describing the events of 1825: One is what appears to be his field diary, containing daily entries. The other is a letter to Gen. Atkinson written after Ashley's return that fall, and contains a narrative of his 1825 season in the Rockies. These two documents are mostly consistent, although the narrative appears to have been written from memory because in some cases, details are different from those recorded in the contemporaneous diary. The diary was kept from March 25 to June 27, 1825. The diary commences on the Platte, just east of the continental divide. It describes the journey to the Green River and the division of the trapping party there. It also details Ashley's trip down the Green River in bullboats, and ends just a few days before Ashley's parties met on the Henry's Fork for the first Rocky Mountain Rendezvous. The narrative covers a longer period of time, from the time he left Ft. Atkinson on November 3, 1824 until he reached the Yellowstone below Big Horn Mountain on the 7th day of August, 1825. From there he proceeded downriver in boats with his rich cargo of furs, to the settlements.
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