The Story of Mountain Man Adventurer Jedediah Smith

 Author Tom Clavin has co-authored another book with Bob Drury, "Throne of Grace." It's the story of Jedediah Smith and his adventurous trips to the west during the era of Manifest Destiny. 

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Hey, good morning. Welcome tothe third hour of the Morning Show with
Preston Scott. Great to be withyou on Preston Show five thousand, one
hundred and fifty two. He's GrantAllen and this, once again on the
radio program is one of our favorites. Tom Claven, He and Bob Drury
have authored a book called Throne ofGrace. I because I am a member

(00:38):
of the media, I have anadvanced copy in my hands and the subtitle
A Mountain Man, An Epic Adventureand the Bloody Conquest of the American West.
Tom Claven, welcome back. Howare you, good morning? I'm
fine. Thank you for having meback. Always a pleasure. I always
love getting a note from Chuck tellingme that you're in a new book.
Here are out together. Tom.Let's set the stage for this book a

(01:02):
little bit. It's the nineteenth century. Thomas Jefferson's president, kind of paint
the scene for us. Well,most people know about the Lewis and Clark
Expedition and that concluded in eighteen ohsix, and how that's sort of for
the first time we got glimpses ofwhat the West was, the American West
was like. But along came afterthe Lewis and Clark was an explorer named

(01:26):
Jedediah Smith, and he made threetrips. Not compared to the one coast
to coast trip that Lewis and Clarkmade, he made three trips, three
different halfways to the west coast andback, and his journals and his experiences
really opened up the American West.For most people, we had no idea
what was west of the Missouri River. There were stories about monsters and giant

(01:47):
beings and all kinds of strange floraand flaurna, and the animals and everything.
But it was Jenediah Smith who gotus a better glimpse of what we
had out there. And behind himcame all of the mountain men, the
fur traders, the beaver trappers,the people going out there to try and
settle some of the what became thecontinent of the United States. We hear

(02:07):
the expression manifest destiny. It's maybebarely touched on in history classes anymore in
middle and high schools, let alonecollege explain manifest destiny. Manifest destiny was
a concept that basically the European descentpeople who were on the Eastern party United

(02:28):
States were moving west to populate andsettle and farm and run businesses and begin
towns in the western party United States. And it was sort of like our
destiny as a nation to do that, to go from the east coast what
most of our population was, togo west across the country and hook up
with our population on the west coast. Now, the good news about that
is that there was so much landand so much beautiful things to see in

(02:52):
the western United States. The badpart, of course, is that it
was already occupied by the indigenous tribes. So a big part of our book
is about it was actually of aconquest that as people moved farther west,
they had to uproot the people whowere already there, and sometimes that led
to conflict. You mentioned Meriwether LewisWilliam Clark. Was Jedediah Smith aware of

(03:13):
their exploits, what they were doingvery much so, you know, Clark
especially had published journals about the adventuresof Elizid Clark several years after the expedition,
and it was very inspiring to ayoung man like Jedediah Smith. He
wanted to He not only wanted toemulate them to do what they did,
he wanted to do more than theydid, which he eventually did. You
know, like I say, hemade three trips coast to coast and brought

(03:36):
back so much a ton of information. And I should say, because he
was such a good fur trapper andbeaver hunter and woodsman and sharpshooter, he
became a rather wealthy man. Thatwasn't what he set out to do.
But it's almost like as a byproductof all his explorations, he accumulated a
good amount of money. Why isthe story of Jedediah Smith so important?

(03:58):
Well, I think, like yousaid, you met reference history books before
and the schools. Jedediah Smith hasa lot of ways lost in the midst
of history that those accomplishments. Hedied when he's still fairly young, and
a lot of his journals, someexist and some survived, some did not.
I think we need to know,not need to know. I think
we want to know about Jedediah Smithbecause he was such a courageous and resilient

(04:23):
man, and he's what he saw. Through his eyes. We see America
as the pre pollution America, thebeautiful America, the unvarnished America of the
woodlands and the deserts, and thesnow capped mountains, and I think to
see that to his eyes is veryexciting, remember the days when times were
good and life was simple. Hestill lives there. The Morning Show with

(04:45):
Preston Scott on Used Radio one hundredpoint seven w FLA. Tom claven has
co authored a book with Bob Drewcalled Throne of Grace, talking about Jedediah
Smith, the name that most ofyou probably don't know very much about.

(05:08):
You know of Lewis and Clark andDaniel Boone and Kick Carson and the rest,
but this is a different one.Tom Clayvin with us. Tom tell
us what we know about Jedediah Smith. Well, we know he came from
up to State, New York,a family that traces its generations even back

(05:29):
to the Mayflower and mostly a farmingfamily. And he was the one,
he was a child of the Smithfamily that was the explorer. He wasn't
going to be a farmer. Hewanted to head west and find out what
was out there, and made hisway to Saint Louis and there was an
expedition being put together to go basically, you know, beaver hunting, and
that sounds like kind of a frivolousthing who want to hunt beaver. Well,

(05:53):
in the eighteen teens, in eighteentwenties, beaver was very expensive.
I mean over in Europe they weremaking these beaver hats by the tens of
thousands, and the demand for beaverPelton for was enormous. So if you
could go and trap beaver and bringthem back and sell them, you can
become pretty wealthy, which eventually happenedto many of these mountainmen. Not all
though, of course, it wasa very dangerous occupation, as you can

(06:14):
imagine, But Jenediz Smith wanted togo on this exposition he did. It
ran to all kinds of adventures,including Indian battles, surviving mountain passes,
of snows, blizzards, all kindsof weather, all kinds of dangers,
and raging rivers. I mean,it's really quite the adventure story of Jenedied
Smith and how he kept over andover again surviving these dangerous situations. Yeah,

(06:35):
you talk about having to, Iguess prepare for the unknown when you're
making a trip like this. Howdid he prepare? I mean, what
was known to him about his tripwest and where he was actually going to
try to set foot? The onlything really known at that time. Well,
in two ways. One you hadthe journals of Lewis and Fark,

(06:58):
which were very helpful. However,they gone to the west coast, had
come back basically along the same route, same route, so you only knew
what they had seen. There wasa whole you know, hundreds of thousands
of acres, millions of acres morethan they had not seen. The other
thing is there were other mountain men, early ones, that were going out
there and exploring and hunting and trappingand some of their adventures that were coming

(07:18):
back and saying, well, Iwas, you know, two hundred miles
away from here, and this iswhat happened to me. But still,
for the most part, it wasthe unknown. They didn't Jedediz Smith and
the other mountain men with him didnot know what they were going to find
out there. They how do youprepare? Except for some of the basic
things. They had some food,they had some water, they had a
rifle, they had some ammunition,had some gunpowder, and they had In

(07:40):
Smith's case, he carried a Biblewith him for inspiration, and that's and
he set off. And what youencountered, you encounter, you hope you
survive. It was what Jededi Smithdid, but some didn't. Was it
known to him that not all NorthAmerican Indian tribes were going to be welcoming
to him? Well, you know, again you had the stories that were

(08:01):
working their way back to Saint Louisthat there were subtribes who were considered friendly
because they liked the trade with theamount rent. But there were others like
the Black Feed for existence an example, and the Sioux Indians they were not
welcoming to the white adventurers and explorersand fur traders, and so you really
had to take your chances. Therewas you know, if you encountered the

(08:22):
Indians, you didn't know if theywere going to be friendly or not.
You hope they were. If youweren't, for the most part, you
had to high tail out of therebecause you were always going to be outnumbered.
Tom what did you learn about thepeople that joined him on these trips
to the west. They were reallycourageous people because they they were adventurers,

(08:43):
They were resilient, they were survivors. They were courageous because they didn't have
to do this. They could havestayed home and operated farms and opened up
a dry goods store and don't know, these maybe even become teachers because some
of these people were really quite intelligent, but they wanted to see what this
place called America was. What whatLouisiana Purchase had bought these millions of acres
from France with Jefferson was president.What's out there? Let's find out?

(09:05):
Let's The curiosity factor was enormous.WSLA on your phone with the iHeart Radio
app and on hundreds of devices likeAlexa, Google Home, Xbox and so
noos. This is Chrisler and IheartsRadiosasion. Final segment with author Tom claven.

(09:28):
He and Bob Drury have co authoredthe book Throne of Grace and it's
a story of Jedediah Smith. Youknow, Tom, I have had Bob
on the program once or twice before, and of course you and I talk
almost every book you release, andI'm grateful for the relationship. How do
you write a book like this withsomebody else? How do you divvy it

(09:50):
up and do it? You know, Bob is the most frequent collaborator I've
had. I think this is oureighth book together, and we determined very
early on, like when we didour first book together. Called Halsey's Typhoon
or World War two Navy story thatyou can't have four hands on the keyboard,
and we both realized his more muscularwriting style suited the material better.

(10:13):
So basically, I do you know, like eighty percent of the research.
I prepare everything, organize everything,handed over to Bob. He does the
writing. Then it comes back tome for revisions and fact checking and anything
else that the peace needs. Andthat's the way we work it out.
Now, I've done it differently.I've collaborated with other people where I'm the
principal writer and somebody else is doingmost of the research. So my personal

(10:35):
experience has been that you can't bandyback and forth. I'll write chapters one,
three, and five, you writechapters two, four and six.
For us, it doesn't work thatway. We have to we have very
clear line defined lines of what we'regoing to do and where our responsibilities are.
Well, these are New York Timesbest selling books and again Throne of
Grace in this case dealing with JedediSmith, what would you list as some

(11:00):
of the accomplishments that maybe history hasn'ttaken note of as it should, that
Jedediah Smith and his trips to theWest accomplished well. One is that the
journals that survived were telling us givingus information about the American Western, but
a lot of the American West.He saw that that knowing European descented man,
that white man basically had never seenbefore. So it really opened our

(11:22):
eyes to what was out there.It wasn't just a great vast desert.
It was mountains, There was woodland, it was rivers, it was streams,
It was so many wonderful things.And the other thing he did is
one specific thing is that he discoveredthe South Pass in the Rocky Mountains.
And what that means is you didn'thave to He found a way that you
can go through the Rocky Mountains,not up and over the Rocky Mountains.
And once that became almost like atunnel that made people from eastern party United

(11:48):
States able to get to the westernpart of the United States. Saved a
lot of lives, saved a lotof time, saved a lot of supplies,
and then people starving the death asthey tried to make their way over
the Rockies. How did he handlethe I mean, you're traveling west,
there's not an abundance of water outthere. I lived out there for about
two decades. How did he getthrough? How did he do it?

(12:09):
You know, that's a great questionbecause it's one of the things that is
I think one of the most interestingparts of the Throne of Grace is that
the resilience of jededi Is Smith andhis colleagues. He rarely traveled alone.
He was just off the leader.But you know people at the mountain,
men like Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrickor right beside him, and they always
managed at the last minute to findthe source of water or to find a

(12:33):
way that they can get through thissnowy mountain pass without without starving to death.
It's just amazing the escapes from deaththat go over and over and over
again that there detailed in the book. Well, you mentioned Lewis and Clark.
We've talked about them a couple oftimes. But their route was absolutely
to the northwest, whereas Smith wouldgo southwest, and that includes the Mojave

(12:56):
Desert. That is no small task, right, It's true he crossed them
all. How he does it endedup in the south southern California, And
it's just for me, it's oneof the most amazing stories in the book
is plotting day after day with himand the few men that remained with him.
I mean their horses are giving out, their mules are giving out,
they have they have no water leftat all. Every time you look across

(13:18):
the landscape is just desert, desert, desert as far as the eye can
see. And yet they survived.Hahha. See he's given us just enough,
just enough intel here to say,go get the book. It's thrown
of grace, Tom Craven with us. Tom, you mentioned you did the
research, and we've talked over theyears about a lot of different stories.

(13:41):
There's no way that you can researcha story like this without wondering, without
there being some just a gap,a question, a thing. Oh I
wish I had just a little moreinfo on this. If there was one
question or one story that you wishyou could sit down with Jedediah Smith and
say what happened here or what wasyour thought there? What would be that

(14:03):
the top question on that list,you know, the top question all the
time that we worked on this book. For me, it was like why
didn't you give up? I meansome of these situations that that Jededi Smith
is in are so dire, areso dangerous, are so scary? Clinging
to life by a bearess thread.Why didn't you give up? I mean,

(14:24):
I think ninety nine percent of thepeople in this situation would have said,
I said, I can't take anotherstep, I'm done. I might
as well just die here. Hedidn't give up, and that's how he
was as a survivor. And I'dlike to know what was it that made
him refuse to give up. Imean, I know he was a religious
man, but that by itself wasnot enough. He just was the just
refuse to give in. Always goodto visit with you, Tom. Thank

(14:46):
you for the book, and thankyou for the time. Thank you.
I appreciate it very much, TomClaven. And the book is Thrown of
Grace, Bob Drewy and Tom Claven. It's a mountain man and epic adventure
in the bloody conquest of the AmericanWest. And you can get it at
your bookstore or wherever your favorite bookoutlet be, online or in person.

(15:11):
Right now, Throne of Grace,Tom Claven, our guest, twenty seven
minutes past the hour