Bed & Breakfast Inns and Ranches of Wyoming

The rendezvous system was the innovation of William Ashley of the American Fur Company.  He had been trying for several years to find a good way to retrieve the year's collection of furs, and at the same time outfit his trappers for the upcoming year's operations.  When he hit upon the idea of establishing a central meeting site where all trappers and traders could gather to do their business, the fur trade came into its own.  Since an animal's winter fur is more valuable than its lighter summer coat, trappers were basically off work in the summer and the rendezvous became an annual party to end all parties.  The traders brought in mail, newspapers, and gossip, plus supplies, including raw alcohol which they watered down and flavored with tobacco, ginger, or chilies, then sold as whiskey.

With alcohol as a lubricant, everything else seems to have fallen under the heading of drunk and disorderly behavior.  The trappers rejoiced greatly in their reunions with friends rumored dead.  Representatives of all the Indian tribes came for the festivities, and their women folk were a major attraction. New recruits, missionaries, artists, newspaper reporters, and other "tourists" traveled west with the traders, and the mountain men and Indians delighted in initiating them into the spirit of things with rowdy welcomes.  Tall tales, dirty jokes, feasts, gambling, horse races, fights, wrestling, shooting contests, songfests, and similar activities filled both day and night.  A suit of ancient English armor was given to Jim Bridger at the 1837 rendezvous.  Trapper Joe Meek tells of borrowing it and parading around camp in fancy dress.

A rendezvous was apparently great fun, unless you happened to be one of the unfortunate souls who got knifed, shot, raped, or as was the case at one rendezvous, bitten by a rabid wolf that rampaged through a group of men rendered defenseless by alcohol.  Meek told of seeing four trappers playing cards using the dead body of a comrade for a card table, but whether it actually happened or not is hard to say -- Meek was a better storyteller than he was a historian.

Click here for a listing of rendezvous sites from 1825 - 1840

Click here for an on-line library of historical fur trade documents