Jedediah Smith - St. Louis Return

St. Louis Return

After Smith returned to St. Louis in 1830, he and his partners wrote a letter on October 29 to Sec. of War John H. Eaton and informed Eaton of the "military implications" in terms of the British allegedly alienating the Native population towards any American trappers in the Pacific Northwest. According to biographer, Dale L. Morgan, Smith's letter was "a clear sighted statement of the national interest."

Smith had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio. After making a sizable profit from the sale of furs, over $17,000 (approx. $4 million in 2011), Jedediah sent $1,500 to his family in Green Township; whereupon his brother Ralph bought a farm. Smith also bought a house on First Avenue in St. Louis to be shared with his brothers. Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St. Louis.

Smith's busy schedule in St. Louis also found him and Samuel Parkman making a map of Smith's cartographic discoveries in the West. Jedediah, in order to make his map complete, needed first hand information on the Southwest, an area he had not extensively explored. In 1831, Smith and his partners formed a supply company of 74 men, twenty-two wagons, and a "six-pounder" artillery cannon for protection. At the request of William H. Ashley, Smith received a passport from Senator Thomas Hart Benton on March 3, 1831. Smith and company left St. Louis to trade in Santa Fe on April 10, 1831.