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The Story of Mountain Man Adventurer Jedediah Smith · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Hey, good morning. Welcome to the third hour of the Morning Show with
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  Preston Scott. Great to be with you on Preston Show five thousand, one
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  hundred and fifty two. He's Grant Allen and this, once again on the
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  radio program is one of our favorites. Tom Claven, He and Bob Drury
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  have authored a book called Throne of Grace. I because I am a member
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  of the media, I have an advanced copy in my hands and the subtitle
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  A Mountain Man, An Epic Adventure and the Bloody Conquest of the American West.
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  Tom Claven, welcome back. How are you, good morning? I'm
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  fine. Thank you for having me back. Always a pleasure. I always
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  love getting a note from Chuck telling me that you're in a new book.
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  Here are out together. Tom. Let's set the stage for this book a
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  little bit. It's the nineteenth century. Thomas Jefferson's president, kind of paint
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  the scene for us. Well, most people know about the Lewis and Clark
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  Expedition and that concluded in eighteen oh six, and how that's sort of for
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  the first time we got glimpses of what the West was, the American West
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  was like. But along came after the Lewis and Clark was an explorer named
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  Jedediah Smith, and he made three trips. Not compared to the one coast
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  to coast trip that Lewis and Clark made, he made three trips, three
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  different halfways to the west coast and back, and his journals and his experiences
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  really opened up the American West. For most people, we had no idea
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  what was west of the Missouri River. There were stories about monsters and giant
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  beings and all kinds of strange flora and flaurna, and the animals and everything.
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  But it was Jenediah Smith who got us a better glimpse of what we
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  had out there. And behind him came all of the mountain men, the
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  fur traders, the beaver trappers, the people going out there to try and
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  settle some of the what became the continent of the United States. We hear
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  the expression manifest destiny. It's maybe barely touched on in history classes anymore in
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  middle and high schools, let alone college explain manifest destiny. Manifest destiny was
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  a concept that basically the European descent people who were on the Eastern party United
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  States were moving west to populate and settle and farm and run businesses and begin
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  towns in the western party United States. And it was sort of like our
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  destiny as a nation to do that, to go from the east coast what
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  most of our population was, to go west across the country and hook up
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  with our population on the west coast. Now, the good news about that
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  is that there was so much land and so much beautiful things to see in
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  the western United States. The bad part, of course, is that it
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  was already occupied by the indigenous tribes. So a big part of our book
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  is about it was actually of a conquest that as people moved farther west,
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  they had to uproot the people who were already there, and sometimes that led
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  to conflict. You mentioned Meriwether Lewis William Clark. Was Jedediah Smith aware of
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  their exploits, what they were doing very much so, you know, Clark
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  especially had published journals about the adventures of Elizid Clark several years after the expedition,
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  and it was very inspiring to a young man like Jedediah Smith. He
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  wanted to He not only wanted to emulate them to do what they did,
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  he wanted to do more than they did, which he eventually did. You
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  know, like I say, he made three trips coast to coast and brought
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  back so much a ton of information. And I should say, because he
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  was such a good fur trapper and beaver hunter and woodsman and sharpshooter, he
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  became a rather wealthy man. That wasn't what he set out to do.
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  But it's almost like as a byproduct of all his explorations, he accumulated a
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  good amount of money. Why is the story of Jedediah Smith so important?
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  Well, I think, like you said, you met reference history books before
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  and the schools. Jedediah Smith has a lot of ways lost in the midst
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  of history that those accomplishments. He died when he's still fairly young, and
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  a lot of his journals, some exist and some survived, some did not.
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  I think we need to know, not need to know. I think
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  we want to know about Jedediah Smith because he was such a courageous and resilient
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  man, and he's what he saw. Through his eyes. We see America
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  as the pre pollution America, the beautiful America, the unvarnished America of the
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  woodlands and the deserts, and the snow capped mountains, and I think to
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  see that to his eyes is very exciting, remember the days when times were
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  good and life was simple. He still lives there. The Morning Show with
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  Preston Scott on Used Radio one hundred point seven w FLA. Tom claven has
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  co authored a book with Bob Drew called Throne of Grace, talking about Jedediah
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  Smith, the name that most of you probably don't know very much about.
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  You know of Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boone and Kick Carson and the rest,
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  but this is a different one. Tom Clayvin with us. Tom tell
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  us what we know about Jedediah Smith. Well, we know he came from
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  up to State, New York, a family that traces its generations even back
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  to the Mayflower and mostly a farming family. And he was the one,
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  he was a child of the Smith family that was the explorer. He wasn't
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  going to be a farmer. He wanted to head west and find out what
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  was out there, and made his way to Saint Louis and there was an
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  expedition being put together to go basically, you know, beaver hunting, and
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  that sounds like kind of a frivolous thing who want to hunt beaver. Well,
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  in the eighteen teens, in eighteen twenties, beaver was very expensive.
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  I mean over in Europe they were making these beaver hats by the tens of
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  thousands, and the demand for beaver Pelton for was enormous. So if you
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  could go and trap beaver and bring them back and sell them, you can
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  become pretty wealthy, which eventually happened to many of these mountainmen. Not all
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  though, of course, it was a very dangerous occupation, as you can
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  imagine, But Jenediz Smith wanted to go on this exposition he did. It
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  ran to all kinds of adventures, including Indian battles, surviving mountain passes,
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  of snows, blizzards, all kinds of weather, all kinds of dangers,
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  and raging rivers. I mean, it's really quite the adventure story of Jenedied
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  Smith and how he kept over and over again surviving these dangerous situations. Yeah,
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  you talk about having to, I guess prepare for the unknown when you're
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  making a trip like this. How did he prepare? I mean, what
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  was known to him about his trip west and where he was actually going to
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  try to set foot? The only thing really known at that time. Well,
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  in two ways. One you had the journals of Lewis and Fark,
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  which were very helpful. However, they gone to the west coast, had
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  come back basically along the same route, same route, so you only knew
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  what they had seen. There was a whole you know, hundreds of thousands
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  of acres, millions of acres more than they had not seen. The other
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  thing is there were other mountain men, early ones, that were going out
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  there and exploring and hunting and trapping and some of their adventures that were coming
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  back and saying, well, I was, you know, two hundred miles
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  away from here, and this is what happened to me. But still,
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  for the most part, it was the unknown. They didn't Jedediz Smith and
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  the other mountain men with him did not know what they were going to find
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  out there. They how do you prepare? Except for some of the basic
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  things. They had some food, they had some water, they had a
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  rifle, they had some ammunition, had some gunpowder, and they had In
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  Smith's case, he carried a Bible with him for inspiration, and that's and
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  he set off. And what you encountered, you encounter, you hope you
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  survive. It was what Jededi Smith did, but some didn't. Was it
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  known to him that not all North American Indian tribes were going to be welcoming
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  to him? Well, you know, again you had the stories that were
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  working their way back to Saint Louis that there were subtribes who were considered friendly
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  because they liked the trade with the amount rent. But there were others like
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  the Black Feed for existence an example, and the Sioux Indians they were not
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  welcoming to the white adventurers and explorers and fur traders, and so you really
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  had to take your chances. There was you know, if you encountered the
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  Indians, you didn't know if they were going to be friendly or not.
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  You hope they were. If you weren't, for the most part, you
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  had to high tail out of there because you were always going to be outnumbered.
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  Tom what did you learn about the people that joined him on these trips
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  to the west. They were really courageous people because they they were adventurers,
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  They were resilient, they were survivors. They were courageous because they didn't have
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  to do this. They could have stayed home and operated farms and opened up
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  a dry goods store and don't know, these maybe even become teachers because some
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  of these people were really quite intelligent, but they wanted to see what this
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  place called America was. What what Louisiana Purchase had bought these millions of acres
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  from France with Jefferson was president. What's out there? Let's find out?
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  Let's The curiosity factor was enormous. WSLA on your phone with the iHeart Radio
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  app and on hundreds of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and so
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  noos. This is Chrisler and Ihearts Radiosasion. Final segment with author Tom claven.
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  He and Bob Drury have co authored the book Throne of Grace and it's
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  a story of Jedediah Smith. You know, Tom, I have had Bob
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  on the program once or twice before, and of course you and I talk
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  almost every book you release, and I'm grateful for the relationship. How do
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  you write a book like this with somebody else? How do you divvy it
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  up and do it? You know, Bob is the most frequent collaborator I've
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  had. I think this is our eighth book together, and we determined very
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  early on, like when we did our first book together. Called Halsey's Typhoon
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  or World War two Navy story that you can't have four hands on the keyboard,
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  and we both realized his more muscular writing style suited the material better.
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  So basically, I do you know, like eighty percent of the research.
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  I prepare everything, organize everything, handed over to Bob. He does the
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  writing. Then it comes back to me for revisions and fact checking and anything
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  else that the peace needs. And that's the way we work it out.
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  Now, I've done it differently. I've collaborated with other people where I'm the
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  principal writer and somebody else is doing most of the research. So my personal
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  experience has been that you can't bandy back and forth. I'll write chapters one,
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  three, and five, you write chapters two, four and six.
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  For us, it doesn't work that way. We have to we have very
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  clear line defined lines of what we're going to do and where our responsibilities are.
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  Well, these are New York Times best selling books and again Throne of
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  Grace in this case dealing with Jededi Smith, what would you list as some
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  of the accomplishments that maybe history hasn't taken note of as it should, that
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  Jedediah Smith and his trips to the West accomplished well. One is that the
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  journals that survived were telling us giving us information about the American Western, but
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  a lot of the American West. He saw that that knowing European descented man,
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  that white man basically had never seen before. So it really opened our
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  eyes to what was out there. It wasn't just a great vast desert.
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  It was mountains, There was woodland, it was rivers, it was streams,
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  It was so many wonderful things. And the other thing he did is
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  one specific thing is that he discovered the South Pass in the Rocky Mountains.
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  And what that means is you didn't have to He found a way that you
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  can go through the Rocky Mountains, not up and over the Rocky Mountains.
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  And once that became almost like a tunnel that made people from eastern party United
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  States able to get to the western part of the United States. Saved a
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  lot of lives, saved a lot of time, saved a lot of supplies,
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  and then people starving the death as they tried to make their way over
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  the Rockies. How did he handle the I mean, you're traveling west,
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  there's not an abundance of water out there. I lived out there for about
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  two decades. How did he get through? How did he do it?
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  You know, that's a great question because it's one of the things that is
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  I think one of the most interesting parts of the Throne of Grace is that
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  the resilience of jededi Is Smith and his colleagues. He rarely traveled alone.
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  He was just off the leader. But you know people at the mountain,
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  men like Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick or right beside him, and they always
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  managed at the last minute to find the source of water or to find a
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  way that they can get through this snowy mountain pass without without starving to death.
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  It's just amazing the escapes from death that go over and over and over
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  again that there detailed in the book. Well, you mentioned Lewis and Clark.
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  We've talked about them a couple of times. But their route was absolutely
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  to the northwest, whereas Smith would go southwest, and that includes the Mojave
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  Desert. That is no small task, right, It's true he crossed them
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  all. How he does it ended up in the south southern California, And
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  it's just for me, it's one of the most amazing stories in the book
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  is plotting day after day with him and the few men that remained with him.
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  I mean their horses are giving out, their mules are giving out,
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  they have they have no water left at all. Every time you look across
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  the landscape is just desert, desert, desert as far as the eye can
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  see. And yet they survived. Hahha. See he's given us just enough,
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  just enough intel here to say, go get the book. It's thrown
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  of grace, Tom Craven with us. Tom, you mentioned you did the
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  research, and we've talked over the years about a lot of different stories.
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  There's no way that you can research a story like this without wondering, without
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  there being some just a gap, a question, a thing. Oh I
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  wish I had just a little more info on this. If there was one
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  question or one story that you wish you could sit down with Jedediah Smith and
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  say what happened here or what was your thought there? What would be that
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  the top question on that list, you know, the top question all the
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  time that we worked on this book. For me, it was like why
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  didn't you give up? I mean some of these situations that that Jededi Smith
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  is in are so dire, are so dangerous, are so scary? Clinging
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  to life by a bearess thread. Why didn't you give up? I mean,
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  I think ninety nine percent of the people in this situation would have said,
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  I said, I can't take another step, I'm done. I might
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  as well just die here. He didn't give up, and that's how he
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  was as a survivor. And I'd like to know what was it that made
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  him refuse to give up. I mean, I know he was a religious
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  man, but that by itself was not enough. He just was the just
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  refuse to give in. Always good to visit with you, Tom. Thank
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  you for the book, and thank you for the time. Thank you.
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  I appreciate it very much, Tom Claven. And the book is Thrown of
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  Grace, Bob Drewy and Tom Claven. It's a mountain man and epic adventure
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  in the bloody conquest of the American West. And you can get it at
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  your bookstore or wherever your favorite book outlet be, online or in person.
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  Right now, Throne of Grace, Tom Claven, our guest, twenty seven
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  minutes past the hour