History: American Old West, United States

The new "brigade-rendezvous" system, however, sent company men in "brigades" cross-country on long expeditions, bypassing many tribes. It also encouraged "free trappers" to explore new regions on their own. At the end of the gathering season, the trappers would "rendezvous" and turn in their goods for pay at river ports along the Green River, the Upper Missouri, and the Upper Mississippi. St. Louis was the largest of the rendezvous towns. An early chronicle described the gathering as "one continued scene of drunkenness, gambling, and brawling and fighting, as long as the money and the credit of the trappers last." Trappers competed in wrestling and shooting matches. When they would gamble away all their furs, horses, and their equipment, they would lament, "There goes hos and beaver." By 1830, however, fashions changed in Europe and beaver hats were replaced by silk hats, sharply reducing the need for American furs. Thus ended the era of the mountain men, trappers and scouts such as Jedediah Smith (who had traveled through more unexplored western land than any non-Indian and was the first American to reach California overland). The trade in beaver fur virtually ceased by 1845.
Settling the West