Robert Campbell (1804 – 1879) was an Irish immigrant who became an American frontiersman, fur trader and businessman. 

Campbell was unique in terms of his successful career in the American West, which included  his involvement in the successful Rocky Mountain Fur Company, as well as his long formal partnership with trapper William Sublette in the 1820s. In 1835, he returned to his hometown of St. Louis, thus ending his frontiersman days. After that, Campbell established himself as a businessman, real estate mogul and banker.

Learn more about Robert Campbell and his connection to Wyoming.

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Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799-1854) was a trapper and trailblazer who became the head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Among the most colorful and highly regarded of the mountain men of that era, Fitzpatrick was party to many of the most important events of western exploration.

Fitzpatrick is credited with leading a trapper band (along with Jedediah Smith) that discovered South Pass, Wyoming and for shepherding the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon. In addition, he was the official guide for John C. Fremont on his second and longest expedition in 1843-1844. He also helped negotiate the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 at the largest council ever assembled of Native Americans of the Plains.

Fitzpatrick was known as “Broken Hand” after he mangled his left hand in a firearms accident.

Learn more about Thomas Fitzpatrick and his connection to Wyoming.

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Jedediah Strong Smith was a hunter, trapper, fur trader, trailblazer, author, cartographer and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, North American West and Southwest during the early 19th century. Smith’s explorations led to the use of the 20-mile wide South Pass as a dominant point for crossing the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Throughout his travels, he survived three massacres and one bear mauling. Smith’s explorations and documentation were important aids to later American westward expansion. In 1831, while searching for water near the Santa Fe Trail in present-day southwest Kansas, Smith disappeared. Later, it was discovered that he’d been killed during an encounter with the Comanche.

Learn more about Jedediah Smith and his connection to Wyoming. 

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The Shoshone were a nomadic Native American tribe who traveled over a wide portion of the Western United States, including parts of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah,  the Great Basin to the Plains, and other parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

Learn more about the Shoshone in Wyoming.

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Pierre’s Hole is a shallow valley in Idaho west of Wyoming’s Teton Range that collects the headwaters of the Teton River. It was a strategic center for the fur trade of the northern Rocky Mountains and the site of the 1832 Fur Trade Rendezvous.

Learn more about the history of Pierre’s Hole. 

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William Drummond Stewart hired Antoine, a “half-breed,”  to accompany him on his adventures into the fur trade wilderness. Antoine was loyal and by Stewart’s side at all times. Artist Alfred Jacob Miller used Antoine in several of his depictions of the Drummond expedition and the American West.

“The subject of the sketch is a half-breed (that is, his father was a Canadian, his mother an Indian) and one of the noblest specimiens of a Western hunter;  in the outward journey he killed for us about 120 Buffalo; his temper however, when aroused, was uncontrollable.” –A.J. Miller, extracted from The West of Alfred Jacob Miller (1837)

Learn more about Antoine and the art of Alfred Jacob Miller.
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Although Miller, the painter, did not see this scene after it occurred during one of Captain Stewart’s earlier trips to the mountains,  the witnesses recounted it to him in detail and he painted several versions of it. The story goes that a  band of young Crows invaded the camp while Stewart was in charge. They carried off stock, pelts, and other property. As Stewart described the incident, a Crow medicine man had told the braves that, if they struck the first blow, they could not win. Thus, the braves had to provoke Stewart or someone in his party into striking first. Stewart stood firm, refusing to strike. The Crows left, and the captain survived a situation in which he would have surely lost the battle.

Learn more about William Drummond Stewart, Antoine and Alfred Jacob Miller.

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Jacques Laramie (also known as Jacques La Remy and LaRamie) was a French Canadian who worked as a fur trapper and trader for the North West Company, which traded furs out of Canada.

In 1815 or 1816, LaRamie and a small group of fellow trappers settled in the area where Fort Laramie would later be located (LaRamie’s Point). This was the confluence of the North Platte River and what is now the Laramie River. In 1821, against his fellow trappers’ warnings about hostile Native American tribes, LaRamie decided to pursue trapping along the river that now bears his name. When he did not show up for the rendezvous the following year, a search party went looking for him.

LaRamie is said to have been killed by either Arapahoes or Utes and placed in the river by a beaver dam near the headwaters of the Laramie river. This area is in Colorado near Cameron Pass. Here, his remains were found several years later by the expedition sent to locate him. The river was named “Laramie” in his honor, and the name would later be given to the Laramie Mountains, as well as the towns of Laramie and Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

Learn more about Jacques LaRamie and more great Wyoming history here.

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Chief Washakie, c.1804-1900, a chief of the Eastern Shoshone tribe of Wyoming, was noted for his exploits in fighting and also for his friendship with the white pioneers. When wagon trains were passing through Shoshone country in the 1850s, Washakie and his people aided the overland travelers in fording streams and recovering strayed cattle. He was also a scout for the U.S. Army.

Learn more about Chief Washakie and the Shoshone of Wyoming.

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John Jacob Astor (1763 – 1848) was a German-born American businessman, merchant, fur trader, and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family.  He was the first multi-millionaire in the United States and as such,  created the first family trust in America. His commercial connections extended over the entire globe and his ships were found in every sea.

Learn more about John Jacob Astor and his connection to Wyoming.

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