Read Online Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado from February, 1830, to November, 1835 (1843) RTF
"His description of the scenery, the Indian fights, trapper’s life, with its lights and shades, and his observations of various sorts are all vivid and well told." -Manning, History of Van Zandt County, 1919."Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, Osbourne Russell, James Beckwourth, Nathaniel Wyeth and Warren Angus Ferris are listed among the well-noted 'mountain men' who worked in Cache Valley." - Hyde Park 2011In 1829, Warren Angus Ferris joined the American Fur company and headed to the Rocky Mountains with a company of thirty men from St. Louis and his diary gives the first authentic published account of Yellowstone Park. Ferris' career in the Rocky mountains embraced the most interesting period of the fur trade. He recorded his experiences in a journal published in a series of installments in the Western Literary Messenger, Buffalo, from July 13, 1842 to May 4, 1844 under the title "Life in the Rocky Mountains."Like Colter and Bridger, Ferris spent many years in following the mountain trails in that period when the quest for pelts was such an absorbing and profitable vocation in the wide region between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. He, too, had his share of adventures, faced dangerous situations and, unlike Colter, of whose end we know nothing definitely, we do know that Ferris returned to civilization, removed from his old home in western New York to Texas.His articles that appeared during the years 1842 and '43, and are descriptive of his wanderings "on the sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia and Colorado, from February, 1830, to November, 1835." He followed the Clark and McKenzie trail to Oregon, and penetrated California long before the first gold discoveries. His journal, written with no little literary skill, and with a graphic quality which entitles it to rank with Irving's "Booneville,"During this time Ferris traveled with Sacagawea's son Charbineau, who had traveled with Lewis and Clarke. In discussing Charbineau, Ferris writes: " We trapped the Maladi to its source, then crossed to the head of Gordiaz River, and trapped it down to the plains of Snake River, from whence we returned to Cache Valley by way of Porteneuf, where we found Dripps and Fontenelle, together with our lost companion Charbineaux. He [Charbineau] states that he lost our trail but reached the river Maladi after dark, where he discovered a village of Indians. Fearing they were unfriendly, he resolved to retrace his steps and find the main company. In pursuance of this plan he filled a beaver skin with water, and set off on his lonely way. After eleven days wandering, during which he suffered a good deal from hunger."In describing a run-in with a grizzly, Ferris writes: " Our unlucky comrade, unwilling to let the animal escape, advanced to the bushes, and was at the same instant attacked by the enraged bear, who sprang upon and threw him. His companions were so paralyzed with the fear that he would be torn to pieces, that they could render him no assistance…."In relating an Indian attack on the trappers, Ferris writes: "We lay as much concealed as possible, in such an open place and passed the night without disturbance; but just at day break, our ears were saluted with the shrill noise of the warrior's whistle, quickly answered by the re‑echoing yells of a multitude of Indians, who were rushing upon us. We sprang from our beds, the Indians re‑appeared the next instant, and poured showers of lead and arrows around us. We saw no means of avoiding death, but resolved to sell our lives as dearly as possible…."Warren Angus Ferris (1810 –1873) was a trapper, cartographer and diarist in the Rocky Mountains from 1830 to 1835. From 1829–1835, he traveled to Cache Valley and the Snake River area with the American Fur Company. With the help of Native American guides, he explored what is now Yellowstone National Park in 1834.
