Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Smith was born into a pioneering family in the Susquehanna Valley of southern New York State in 1799. In 1821 he left his family for the life of a mountain man. He wore buckskin clothes, fringed at the seams, with buffalo hide moccasins on his feet. Jedediah Smith was different though. He did not drink, swear, or chew tobacco. His bible was as important to him as his rifle. Smith also had a critical gift, a copy of the Lewis and Clark journals,. It is said that Smith carried these journals and his bible on all of his travels.
South pass had been found in 1812 by fur trappers, but then it was forgotten. Jedediah Smith rediscovered South Pass, a gap through the Rocky Mountains in the Wyoming Region.
Two years after Smith rediscovered the South Pass, Smith and a trading party left the Great Salt Lake and crossed the Mojave Desert to southern California, becoming the first Americans to enter California from the east.
In 1827, Smith journeyed to the American River near Sacramento and then crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the desert to return to the Great Salt Lake. He became the first American to return from California on an overland route. He also succeeded in opening up the coastal route from California to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River.
In 1831 Smith returned to the Santa Fe Trade. In May of that year he was surrounded and killed by Comanche Indians at a water hole near the Cimarron River while in route to Santa Fe
Question:
What did Jedediah Smith always carry with him?