8
Wednesday, August 11, 2021 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Commentary...
Me and Jim Bridger
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
A couple of years ago,
the ownership of The Nugget
hosted a gathering of the
chiefs of their roster of com-
munity newspapers, hail-
ing from Washington and
Oregon to Michigan. We
rendezvoused in their home
base of Buffalo, Wyoming,
which lies at the foot of the
eastern slope of the Bighorn
Mountains much as Sisters
relates to the Cascades.
It9s historic country.
The Bozeman Trail, which
branched off of the Oregon
Trail in the 1860s to reach
the goldfields in Montana,
runs through the country.
In 1892, local cattle barons
brought in a mercenary con-
tingent of Texas gunmen to
run out small operators in
the area whom they accused
of rustling cattle. This nasty
piece of business would
go down in history as the
Johnson County War.
I got to Buffalo early
enough to take a 15-min-
ute drive out to the site of
Fort Phil Kearney and the
Fetterman Fight, where, on
December 21, 1866, a mas-
sive force of Lakota Sioux,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho
ambushed and rubbed out
79 U.S. Army soldiers and
two civilians who had made
the fatal mistake of chasing
a group of decoys across
Lodge Trail Ridge.
All of this was, of course,
a feast for someone who
has been immersed in fron-
tier history since childhood.
One of the things that struck
me most profoundly as I
explored the site of Fort
Phil Kearney was that I was
walking in the footsteps of
Jim Bridger.
Bridger was one of the
original mountain men, who
became the premier scout
and guide on the northern
plains. I9ve been cutting his
sign since I was a kid.
Bridger features promi-
nently in two historical
novels by Michael Punke 4
<The Revenant= (which was
turned into a movie star-
ring Leonardo DiCaprio),
and the recently released
<Ridgeline,= which vividly
tells the tale of the Fetterman
Fight. Lane Jacobson of
Paulina Springs Books in
Sisters recruited me to be
Punke9s <conversation part-
ner= in a Books in Common
NW event. That talk can
be viewed via the Books
in Common NW YouTube
channel.
<The Revenant= depicts
an episode from Bridger9s
youth, when he was caught
up in Hugh Glass9 epic
struggle for survival after
being mauled by a sow griz-
zly bear on the Grand River
in now-South Dakota in
1823. <Ridgeline= depicts
Bridger9s role as a scout for
the U.S. Army in 1866, when
they moved into the Powder
River Country to construct
forts to guard the Bozeman
Trail route. Bridger warned
the Army command that the
Powder River Country tribes
were gathering in great force
to drive them out, but they
did not heed his warnings&
During his near-half-cen-
tury career in the American
West, Bridger saw 4 and
facilitated 4 massive
change. In 1822, when he
first hired on to trap bea-
ver for General William
Ashley in an expedition up
the Missouri River, the land
was a vast wilderness, teem-
ing with wildlife and domi-
nated by the political, dip-
lomatic, and military power
of vigorous native peoples
4 the Blackfeet, Shoshone,
Flathead, Nez Perce, Lakota,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho.
Bridger, completely illiter-
ate, had an exceptional sense
of geography and terrain,
and his fur-trapping expe-
ditions made the lay of the
land known to the growing
republic.
When the fur trade died
out 4 due to changing
fashions and over-trapping
of the resource 4 Bridger
built a trading post in south-
western Wyoming he named
Fort Bridger. It became an
important waystation for
the growing flood of emi-
grants passing through the
plains and Rocky Mountains
on their way to Oregon and
California.
By the time Bridger took
up work as a scout for the
army, the West was filling
up with mining communi-
ties, and the Indian peoples
with whom he9d lived, inter-
married, or fought, depend-
ing on circumstances, were
in decline, ravaged by dis-
eases like smallpox, alco-
holism fomented by the
whiskey trade, and under
increasing pressure due to
climate change and the loss
of their range.
<The free life in the
mountains= that Bridger
loved was disappearing 4
and he9d had a major hand in
its demise. In making his liv-
ing and his life, he had infor-
mally mapped the West and
discovered routes that would
one day be used by railroads
and interstates, guided and
provided advice and succor
to emigrants who would fill
it up, facilitated the work of
the military force that would
subdue and tame it.
He was the living
embodiment of what I
call The Frontiersman9s
Paradox: We come to a wild,
free, beautiful place, seek-
ing an untrammeled life and
a bit of economic prosper-
ity 4 and our every action
changes what we love.
Punke has Bridger
reflecting on all of this in
<Ridgeline,= in a camp-
fire conversation with Jim
Beckwourth, who was born
a slave and came West to
become a Mountain Man
and then a war chief of the
Crow Nation:
<Do you ever think about
whether we9re doing right or
wrong?= asked Bridger.
<What do you mean?
replied Beckwourth.
<I don9t know exactly,=
said Bridger. <But I9ve been
thinking some lately, won-
dering about things.=
<Things such as what?=
<Well, I9ll tell you one&
When I was eighteen years
old, I rode on to the Great
Salt Lake 4 first white man
to ever see it, so far as I
know.=
<Pretty country.=
<Pretty for sure, and
wild 4 but that9s part of my
point. Have you been there
lately?=
<Not for a long time.=
<Well, it9s practically as
big as St. Louis. Half the
buildings are brick, and the
Mormons are even putting
up a temple.=
<You sound like you9re
PHOTO FROM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A sculpture of a beckoning Jim Bridger looms at the site of the trading
post he built in southwestern Wyoming.
complaining,= said
Beckwourth. <Didn9t all
those Mormons stop off at
your fort to buy flour and
repair their wagons? I heard
you made a killing.=
<I did okay. And I9m not
complaining, exactly 4 just
wondering.=
<Wondering what?=
Well, I don9t know& won-
dering if it9s a good thing or
a bad thing, I guess.=
I think about Bridger
as we are washed in the
tides of change in Sisters
Country, as more and more
people discover this place.
I think about Bridger when
2017 FORD F-150
Year-round
FIREWOOD
SALES
— Kindling —
—
—
SISTERS
FOREST PRODUCTS
541-410-4509
SistersForestProducts.com
The Nugget publishes a story
sharing a favorite hike, or
when we have to pull a per-
mit to experience a vestige
of <the wild, free life in the
mountains.=
We simultaneously want
to share our bounty and
keep it for ourselves. And
the more of us who seek it,
the less there is to share. Jim
Bridger knew our song.
*The most recent series
of The Frontier Partisans
Podcast explores the life of
Jim Bridger. Find the pod-
cast on Podbean at https://
frontierpartisans.podbean.
com/ or on Spotify
$
35,900
Bring
ng us your trade-ins
trade ins and
low-mileage consignments!
4x4, super crew,
5.0L, V-8,
A.R.E.
A . R canopy,
air bags,
one owner.
101K miles.
Sisters Car Connection
541-815-7397 192 W. Barclay Dr., Sisters