Alexander Ross (fur trader)

Alexander Ross (May 9, 1783 – October 23, 1856) was a fur trader and author.

Fur trader and explorer

Ross emigrated to Upper Canada, present day (Ontario), from Scotland about 1805. In 1811, while working for John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, Ross took part in the founding of Fort Astoria, a fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River. He joined the North West Company in 1813, after they acquired the fort and renamed it Fort George. In 1814 Alexander Ross and three Indians crossed the North Cascades on a project of discovery. Ross's account is vague but they probably crossed the mountains via Cascade Pass.^[1]

In 1818 Ross acted as scribe for a trading party from the North West Company who traveled within sight of the Teton Range in modern Wyoming. He and trapper Daniel Potts apparently viewed some of the thermal features of what is today Yellowstone National Park. Each of them produced an account of these features, with Ross reporting that "...boiling fountain having different degrees of temperature were very numerous; one or two were so very hot as to boil meat."(Breining, p. 69)

Alexander Ross describes the lower Columbia River area of the Oregon Country (known to him as the Columbia District):

"The banks of the river throughout are low and skirted in the distance by a chain of moderately high lands on each side, interspersed here and there with clumps of wide spreading oaks, groves of pine, and a variety of other kinds of woods. Between these high lands lie what is called the valley of the Wallamitte [sic], the frequented haunts of innumerable herds of elk and deer.... . In ascending the river the surrounding country is most delightful, and the first barrier to be meet with is about forty miles up from its mouth. Here the navigation is interrupted by a ledge of rocks, running across the river from side to side in the form of an irregular horseshoe, over which the whole body of water falls at one leap down a precipice of about forty feet, called the Falls."

In July 1818 Fort Nez Perces was established by the North West Company under the direction of traders Donald MacKenzie and Alexander Ross on the east bank of the Columbia River, half a mile north of the mouth of the Walla Walla River and a few miles below the mouth of the Snake River; at a site first claimed and posted by David Thompson. From 1821 (when the North West merged with the Hudson's Bay Company) onward, Ross worked for the HBC including four years as factor at Fort Nez Perces.

Later years

Ross subsequently moved to the Red River Settlement, present-day Manitoba, where he served as Sheriff and a member of the council. His daughter Mary married George Flett on 26 November 1840. Flett was later to become a prominent Presbyterian missionary.^[2] In 1841 Sir George Simpson asked Ross to lead a settlement party to Columbia District in an attempt to hold it in the face of increasing US settlement into the region they called Oregon Country. Fearing that he lacked the strength at his age for such an arduous journey; Ross recruited James Sinclair, who successfully led a a large party of Red River Colonists to Fort Vancouver later that year.

References

Further reading

• Breining, Greg, Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb beneath Yellowstone National Park (St. Paul, MN: Voyageur Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0-7603-2925-2

External links

• "Alexander Ross", the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Journal of Alexander Ross:Snake Country Expedition
• Ross, Alexander, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River Google Books, [1]
• Ross, Alexander, The Fur Hunters of the Far West Google Books, [2]
• "Alexander Ross's 1824 Route into Stanley Basin" [3]