7
Trapper Philosophizes
By Nathaniel J. Wyeth
An admirable tribute to Nathaniel Wyeth paid by James Russell Lowell in a letter to the Portland, Oregon, High School in April, 1890, instigated a search for Wyeth's own accounts of his expeditions. This effort brought to light an almost complete record of his marvelous journeys. Of the man himself, Lowell said, "He was a very remarkable person whose conversation I valued highly. A born leader of men, he was fitly called Captain Nathaniel Wyeth as long as he lived."
Wyeth, a New England Yankee and an independent fur trader, who had a great deal of hard luck in his enterprises, was founder of the trading posts at Fort Hall and Fort William on Sauvie's Island.
Jan. 11, 1835
Last night grew cold and set in for a hard snow storm with a gale of wind from the W. S. W. which continued with out intermission until sunset today so we did not move camp, the crackling of the falling trees and the howling of the blast was more grand than comfortable, it makes two individuals feel their insignificance in the creation to be seated under a blankett with a fire in front and 3½ feet of snow about them and more coming and no telling when it will stop, tonight tis calm and nearly full moon it seems to shine with as much indifference as the storms blow and wether for weal or woe, we two poor wretches seem to be little considered in the matter. The thoughts that have run through my brain while I have been lying here in the snow would fill a volume and of such matter as was never put into one, my infancy, my youth, and its friends, and faults, my manhood's troubled stream, its vagaries, its aloes mixed with the gall of bitterness and its results viz under a blankett hundreds perhaps thousands of miles from a friend, the Blast howling about, and smothered in snow, poor, in debt, doing nothing to get out out of it, despised for a visionary, nearly naked, but there is one good thing plenty to eat health and heart.
