Joe Meek: The Mountain Man
He was the tall Virginian. A trapper, Indian fighter, pioneer, peace officer, frontier politician, and lover of practical jokes and Jacksonian democracy.
This friend and companion of Kit Carson and Jim Bridger was a true pioneer of Wyoming and Hot Springs County.
The Pioneers of Outlaw Country.
Cowboys, Lawmen and Outlaws… to the businessmen and women who all helped shape Thermopolis and Hot Springs County, Wyoming.
Here are their stories.
Joe Meek was once described as “A tall man, with long black hair, smooth face, dark eyes, a harum-scarum, don't-care sort of man, full of life and fun.”
As a teenage greenhorn, Joe arrived in the wilderness of Wyoming and survived his harrowing adventures to become one of the most renowned and well-liked mountain man of his time.
The roar of the grizzly, war cries of the Blackfeet and the lonesome song of the wind ushered Joe Meek to a world of the mountain men. Death was a constant companion and if you weren’t at the Rendezvous at the appointed time to sell your beaver pelts, it was assumed you had met the grim reaper along the way either by beast, enemy or harsh weather.
Joe Meek was born in 1810 among the mountains of the Old Dominion in Virginia. He was a middle child of a large family of fifteen brothers and sisters and allowed to run wild, too big and headstrong to be disciplined. His two older brothers had already left home and he dreamed of one day joining them on their imagined adventures.
Tall and strong for his years, he spent his time avoiding chores, hunting with his squirrel gun and exploring the mountains in his heedless, happy-go-lucky way, learning the mountain craft that was to make him famous. Fun-loving, daring, and apt to show off, this Virginian mountaineer managed to get along with nearly everybody in Washington County—except the teacher and the preacher.
One day, when his schoolmaster threatened him with the wooden paddle on which his ABC’s were pasted, Joe grabbed it and cracked the teacher over the head instead. That was the end of Joe’s formal schooling much to his pious stepmother’s chagrin. He would come to realize, just a few years later, the importance of reading when he couldn’t understand the papers he was signing or read the letters from home. His school was then a distant mountain camp where he learned to read and write over a crackling fire.
To reach that camp, Joe had run away from home.
After the incident with the school teacher, news arrived that his older brother, Stephen, had enlisted with a fur company at St. Louis and was heading for the Rocky Mountains. Determined to join his older brother, 16-year-old Joe hitched a ride on a wagon bound for Louisville, Kentucky. He wandered around for months and by the following winter had made it as far as Pittsburgh. Eventually he arrived at his brother Hiram’s sawmill near Lexington, Missouri and worked there until the fall of 1828. He then traveled down the Missouri River to St. Louis, determined to find Stephen.
Just six years prior, in 1822, Major Andrew Henry and General William H. Ashley had formed a partnership in St. Louis which eventually became the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. After their first attempt at a fort failed, Ashley and Henry instead held annual fur fairs which they dubbed Rendezvous’ in some convenient, previously appointed valley in the mountains.
Every summer their trappers brought the furs they had taken, took their year’s wages in goods, and obtained a new outfit for the coming year. These trappers were kept busy catching beaver in fall and spring, spent the winter hunting and trading with the Indians, and passed the summer exploring, looking for new beaver streams to conquer. Supplies were brought to Rendezvous by pack trains, which also carried the furs back to market in St. Louis. Under this system the beaver trappers had no occasion to return to the settlements or sleep under a roof. It was the very life that Joe Meek wanted for himself.
Now 18 years old, Joe mustered his courage and approached Captain William Sublette for a job. The formidable Bill Sublette, known as “Cut-Face” by the Indians for a well-earned scar on his chin, was an imposing force who dismissed Joe’s request with a gruff, “You get killed before you got halfway there.”
Joe grinned winningly and according to his own stories, replied. “Well, if I do, then I reckon I can die.”
Bill laughed and responded, “Well, that’s the game spirit. Maybe you’ll do after all. . . . Only, be smart and keep your wits about you.”
Joe was hired that very day by his new booshway, the term used by the mountain men for the company man who supervised their trapping.
He bought his supplies on credit from the fur company, its value to be deducted from his wages for the coming year. The company grew to sixty men with approximately 250 saddle and pack animals. It was still cold, with occasional snow flurries, sleet storms, and chilling rains. There were no tents or waterproofs in camp and Joe was forced to find shelter where he could, even if it was just beneath his saddle.
On March 17, 1829, Joe left St. Louis to on his new adventure as a mountain man.
The trappers of his Rocky Mountain Fur Company were to be encamped on the headwaters of Wind River, in what is now Wyoming. To reach them, their most direct route would have been up the Platte River. But ever since Colonel Henry Leavenworth had made his fruitless attack on the Ree villages six years earlier, those warlike Indians had made the Platte dangerous to navigate. It was also dangerous Sioux country and so Sublette chose to go down the Sante Fe Trail where wagons and patrolling troops had kept the route safer for the past eight years.
Eventually, the men parted company with the troops and rode 150 miles alone before they reached Bent’s Fort and turned north along the foothills of the Rockies, heading for the Platte, Sweetwater, and Wind River.
Along the way, a seasoned mountain man gave Joe advice which he credits with saving his life on more than one occasion - In Injun country a man’s got to keep his eyes skinned and his powder dry.
William Sublette, known as Billy to his men, had gone up the Missouri River with Henry and Ashley in 1822. He organized his fur brigade like a military force and wouldn’t stand for any foolishness from the men who followed him into the wilderness.
By the time the pack train reached the foothills of the Rockies, Meek and his comrades formed a compact, disciplined and well-trained company. They were good riders, good shots, and hard as nails.
Early one morning, before the mules were packed, the top of the ridge suddenly sprouted war bonnets, lances, guns, and horses’ heads.
The cry went out - “Injuns!” Hundreds of them in line of battle came sweeping down the slope on the dead run.
Joe and his friends sprang up from their mess, grabbing their rifles. Sixty men against hundreds of mounted warriors. All around it was bare prairie without any cover. They could not run; a mule would have no chance against those fleet Indian ponies. It was fight or die.
Sublette immediately drew his whole force up to face the charge. They didn’t know whether the Indians were charging in peace or war, for it was their custom to “charge” on their friends and “capture” them.
Sublette ran out in front of his line, then turned and called back, “When you hear my shot, then fire!” The warriors rushed towards them. When they were only fifty paces away, Sublette threw up his own rifle and his men did the same.
According to Joe, their bold stand had its effect. As suddenly as they had charged, the Indians reined up. The chief jumped from his pony, laid his weapons on the ground, and walked quietly forward, holding up his empty palms in sign of peace. Sublette likewise laid down his rifle and walked forward for a powwow. The two men shook hands and hugged each other, then parleyed in the sign language.
Sublette learned that the Indians were a war party of Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, out looking for their enemies the Blackfeet and Crow. Sublette opened his packs and made the chief a substantial present of tobacco, blankets, powder and ball, vermilion, and brass rings. There was more handshaking and hugging. Then the chief, distributing the presents he had received among his leading warriors, mounted and led them away.
The pack train continued on their journey. That year Sublette expected to find his trappers encamped on the Popo Agie. They followed the stream which meant “Head River” in the Crow language until, early in the afternoon, far off against the naked red sandstone bluffs, they saw columns of smoke and finally the Indian lodges, surrounded by the ponies and mules of the camp.
It was July 1, 1829. They had been three and a half months on the trail. Even the mules quickened their pace.
In Indian country you never snuck into a friendly camp. When Sublette had come within three hundred yards of the nearest lodge, he suddenly let out a bloodcurdling war whoop, fired his rifle into the air, and set spurs to his horse. All the old-timers slapped their open mouths with one hand as they whooped and followed.
Joe and the green hands joined the ruckus. It was their first rendezvous! They charged in on a dead run, shooting and yelling. By that time, the men in camp came rushing to meet them, far outnumbering Sublette’s little band. They shouted their welcome, half blotted out by the smoke which foamed from rifles along their front.
The two forces melted together as the campers wheeled their horses, falling in alongside old friends to shake hands, hug each other, and shout greetings. Together they all rushed into camp, plunging on through the smoke, to stop, rearing, in a cloud of dust before the big buffalo lodge of the booshway, headquarters of the partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Near the booshway’s lodge stood other tall tipis belonging to the Indian wives of well-to-do free trappers: while all around clustered the improvised camps of the hired trappers, skin trappers and camp keepers—wickiups, huts, or mere unsheltered bedrolls on the ground.
After the loud greeting, the first order of business was to hand out the mail. Sublette called name after name of those to whom letters or newspapers were addressed, tossing the pieces to the claimants until all had been distributed.
Next, the trappers stood in line, and, as each came up with his beaver pelts, Sublette’s clerk checked them in until the man’s last-year’s debt was paid, crediting him with it on the books, and then swapping whatever the man needed for the coming year.
Once a trapper had paid his debt and bought gifts for his Indian wife or girlfriend, he felt free to squander his credit. The saying in the mountains was that “Hell’s full of money” so it was spent freely at Rendezvous.
Some of the mountain men spent a thousand dollars’ worth of beaver in one day. Once debts and women were taken care of, the booming business of the trade began. Sublette brought out the kegs he had packed in from the States, kegs purposely made flat to fit on a pack saddle, and knocked in the bungs with a tent peg and a stone mallet. The trappers came swarming with tin cups and camp kettles, eager to “wet their dry,” a thirst which had been building up for a whole year of hardship, danger, and exposure.
They had seen fellows frozen, killed by a horse, or shot and scalped by Injuns. The survivors were ready to cut loose and raise a little hell. This might be their last rendezvous.
At a time when seventy-five cents would buy as good a meal as New York City afforded, they gladly paid four dollars a pint in prime beaver skins for diluted raw alcohol, potent enough to curl the hair of a grizzly.
“Hyar’s the beaver. Whar’s the likker?” was another favorite slogan.
It had been a good year. Most of the men were young, in good health and spirits. The spring hunt was over. From mid-June until September was the holiday season, when trapping was unprofitable and the weather was fine.
During Rendezvous, competition grew fierce and bitter as each exalted himself and belittled his comrades. Fists began to fly, and the good spirits and high jinks of the mountain men turned suddenly to violence and bloodshed.
For the most part, Joe saw, it was a pleasant, friendly fight of young men with too much liquor. However, during his first Rendezvous, one man was killed. This sobered the brawlers sufficiently to bring their combat to an end, and they went back to milder forms of competition with cards, or playing Hand with the Indians.
Joe Meek was horrified to see four trappers using the carcass of their dead comrade for a card table. Callously they slapped down the cardboards on his cold back with never a sign of revulsion—except another swig of booze from the camp kettle. Their callousness, and the laughter it inspired in others, shocked Joe even more.
Though astonished and alarmed by the gambling, swearing, drinking, and fighting, Joe admired the fearlessness, the scorn of sordid gain, the wholehearted merriment and abandon all around him. However, the violence he saw was too much and he lost his meal —only to be laughed at for his pains.
In the morning, Joe recounted telling another greenhorn, “Well, hyar we are, Doc. I reckon the green will rub off afore long.”
By this time, Joe’s boots were worn out, and the clothing he had worn on the long trail from the settlements were all in rags. He was soon outfitted with moccasins and buckskin, more fitting for a life in the Wyoming wilderness.
Rendezvous was soon over. Their booshway Captain William Sublette was becoming anxious. His two partners in the fur company, David Jackson and Jedediah Smith, were to have met him and had not turned up. The seasoned trappers, now poor again and in debt for new outfits, were, as they put it, “half froze for the trail” and “ready to put out.”
They moved on from Rendezvous and finally met up with Smith at Pierre’s Hole. He brought bad news. One day, he said, while he was absent from his camp, a large number of Umpqua Indians had come into camp. Smith’s men had carelessly laid aside their guns. Suddenly the Indians attacked and butchered twenty-four of them, stole Smith’s horses, furs, traps, and all. Now Jedediah was back, with the survivors and a single horse.
The news of this heavy loss of life struck Joe Meek hard. To his surprise, the other men gave no sign of grief. Their simple comment was, “Out of luck.” Joe began to understand how it was that those men at rendezvous could play cards on a dead comrade’s back. Though they warmly welcomed Smith and the other survivors here in Pierre’s Hole, they had nothing to say about those who had “gone under.”
Trappers lived dangerous and lonely lives, always in peril of the claws of a grizzly bear or the sudden arrow of an enemy warrior. They never knew when a horse might cripple them with a kick or make a misstep on some mountainside, or when they might be drowned, frozen, starved, or die of thirst. War, work, and weather were trouble enough for them, without adding the evils of worry.
As Joe Meek later put it, “Live men war what we wanted; dead ones war of no account.”
In September Joe was ordered off with other trappers to make his first hunt.
Of all the tribes in the mountains, the Blackfeet were most feared and hated. John Colter, Joe learned, traveling with a band of friendly Crows, had to defend himself when the Blackfeet attacked the Crows. He was a good shot and so was the first American to shoot down a Blackfoot.
Ever since that day, men said, Bug’s Boys, as they were nicknamed, had been relentlessly hostile to all Americans. The Blackfoot Confederacy was made up of several big tribes: Blackfeet, Piegans, and Bloods—all closely allied with the Big Bellies or Gros Ventres of the Prairie. These Indians fought for glory, for horses, for enemy hair—and for the sheer fun of it.
They generally went to war on foot, and could easily cover their trail. They lay in wait in thickets and gulches—as tricky, sudden, and dangerous as a rattlesnake without a rattle. Many of them had been well armed by traders. But Blackfeet or no Blackfeet, Joe and his friends had to trap the fur. Joe rode out with the rest looking for sign of beaver.
Fearing that the sound of gunfire might bring Blackfeet upon them, the trappers in the party did not hunt for meat, but subsisted on the flesh of the beaver they caught. Joe learned to skin his beaver, cut off the tail, and hang it on a stick by the fire to roast. The heat peeled off the skin to the meat beneath. Beavertail tasted like marrow or boiled perch—though it was more oily than either and delicious to the hungry teenager.
It was agreed that the winter quarters would be on the Wind River. They all packed up to make the fall hunt in American territory. Sublette himself planned to go up Henry’s Fork of Snake River towards the North Pass to Missouri Lake, where the Madison Fork of the Missouri River rises.
The area was in dangerous Blackfoot country, much of it unexplored. Before the camp on the forks of the Snake could pull out, Joe was in his first Indian fight.
It was early morning, still twilight, when Meek heard the call to turn out. He was just ready to loosen the lariats and hobbles of his mules when he heard a high-pitched yelp, a chorus of war whoops, and the beat of hoofs on the hard, dry prairie, coming on the run.
While Joe clung to the lariat of his rearing mule, he saw the flash of gunfire, the ragged silhouette of a hundred warriors, half-hidden in white powder smoke, tore by, waving blankets as they tried to stampede the horses.
As the smoke drifted away, Joe saw that most of the horses were still hobbled and staked out securely. The Blackfeet had jumped the camp a little too quick. Had they waited a few minutes longer until all the animals had been turned loose, they might have swept off the whole herd. It was all over in a moment, before Joe knew what to do, or could do anything but hang on to his mule. As suddenly as they had come, the Indians were gone.
Afterwards, Meek picked up a pair of moccasins one of the attacking brave had dropped. For the next few hours, the tired men built a big pole corral to hold the stock for the night.
At about eight o’clock the booshway came around to tell Joe, who was about to turn in for the night, that he was detailed for guard duty. When his watch came and they awakened him, Joe and an old-timer named Reese took up their blankets and rifles and stumbled to the far side of the camp.
Exhausted, the two men fell asleep on their watch. The next thing Joe knew, he heard Sublette swearing, coming round the corral to inspect the guard. Cursing his bad luck, Joe knew that a guard caught napping would have to walk all the next day, carrying his saddle – if he was lucky.
Apparently, the Captain’s last call, “All’s well,” had not been answered. But Reese called to the Captain in a loud whisper, “Down, Billy! Injuns!”
Suddenly Sublette’s tall figure vanished as he bellied down beside Reese. Meek heard him answer, “Where? Where?”
Reese whispered back reproachfully, “They war right thar when you hollered so.”
Still angry, Sublette demanded defensively, “Where’s Meek?”
Raising his voice a little so Meek could hear, Reese replied, “He’s trying to shoot one.”
The Captain demanded to know how many Injuns were out there. Joe said, “I cain’t make out just how many thar are, Captain.”
At last Sublette went back to bed but come sunup, they knew the Captain would be looking for Blackfoot sign around camp, and if he found none, there might be hell to pay.
Joe grabbed the pair of Blackfoot moccasins out of his possible sack. Before daylight, he tossed them away on the far side of camp where somebody would be bound to look.
After sunup, the horse guard found the moccasins and brought them to Sublette and the booshway publicly praised the two poker-faced guards for their vigilance the night before.
Joe Meek continued to explore the Wyoming wilderness despite the daily dangers. He survived grizzly bears and near drownings. At one point, he was even lost in the Tetons after a Blackfeet raid scattered their camp. He reunited with his companions in Colter’s Hell – the bubbling hot springs of the future Yellowstone National Park.
The green rubbed off before the end of the year and he spent the cold winter along the banks of the Wind River that would one day be Hot Springs and Fremont County.
When fashions changed and the beaver fur trade died off, Joe eventually moved on to become a founding father of Oregon and a successful politician with his Nez Pierce bride at his side. No matter the journey his life took, Wyoming was forever etched into his soul and he regaled his audiences with tales that, although fantastic, were, mostly, true.
Joe Meek will forever be the cheerful mountain man, full of life and pranks.
Thank you for listening to Pioneers of Outlaw Country. I am your host, Jackie Dorothy.
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Big Horn River Pilot, Volume 02, Number 09, May 11, 1898
Joe Meek: The Merry Mountain Man, A Biography by Stanley Vestal
