Following the Mexican Revolution in 1821, traders from Spanish and Mexican territory bartered actively in the southwest. Following the reconquest of New Mexico and throughout the seventeenth century, New Mexican traders purchased elk, buffalo, beaver, and other skins from the Comanches and Utes. The reports of Rivera and Dominguez and Escalante led to the anticipation of riches on the northern fringes of Hispanic domains.
With little interest in converting Indians, however, these entrepreneurs sought more tangible rewards in Utah and western Colorado by trading corn, firearms, liquor, and roses with the Utes for furs and Paiute slaves. Unfortunately, because of the gubernatorial bans, these expeditions are largely undocumented except for the trials of those caught returning with contraband furs, slaves, or the Americans and French whom the Hispanic authorities arrested and imprisoned for trading illegally as early as 1802.
In the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Americans and British began trading in the upper Missouri and Pacific Northwest. Excitement over the potential profits from furs of the upper Missouri and Oregon Country swept the United States. Led by Spaniard Manuel Lisa, Frenchman Pierre Chouteau, and American John Colter (who had accompanied Lewis and Clark), traders departed from St. Louis for the headwaters of the Missouri, trapping on its tributaries and eventually establishing the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company to work in the region.
Not to be outdone, New York businessman and German emigrant John Jacob Astor organized the American Fur Company and its western subsidiary, the Pacific Fur Company, to trade on the Columbia. After establishing Astoria on the Oregon Coast, Astor’s partners learned of the outbreak of the War of 1812. Word of the approach of a British man-of-war gave an immediate meaning to the term “hostile takeover,” and the Astorians prudently sold out to the British-owned North West Fur Company.
In the meantime, however, a party of Astorians led by Robert Stuart returned to the United States from Oregon in 1812. Approximating the future route of the Oregon Trail over part of their journey, they discovered South Pass in south-central Wyoming. In this discovery, they found the easiest route across the Rockies leading into the Great Basin, Oregon, and California.
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John Colter (1774–1812), was one of the first American mountain men after leaving the L&C group in 1807, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He later became the first European man to enter Yellowstone National Park, and to see what is now Jackson Hole and the Teton Mountain Range.
The French had been in the Rockies (called the Stoney Mountains) as early as the 1600's, the Jesuit Priest movement was founded by Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, in August 1534. After the approval of the Society of Jesus by Pope Paul III in 1540 and 55 years after the death of its founder, Ignatius de Loyola, the first Jesuits, the Frenchmen Pierre Biard and Ennemond Massé, set foot in what is now Canada, at Port Royal, May 22, 1611. "It is according to our divine calling," Loyola had written, "to travel to various places and to live in any part of the world where there is hope of God's greater service and the help of souls," and in Canada these "Blackrobes," as they soon came to be called, immediately began to reach out to the indigenous peoples in the vast new land. They went first to the Micmacs, next to the Montagnais, then to the Algonquins. They followed the wanderers, trappers, tradesmen. They made their way into the forests, along the waterways, across the portages and through the woods. French traders and trappers were in North America before Colter was born, just not called mountain men.
The term "mountain men" really doesn't say what they were, while other terms tell the story; Voyager, Trader, Trapper, Explorer, Scout, etc.
"Mountain Men were skilled in many tasks and trades and masters of none." Osborn Russell .
