About the middle of August the wagons laden with peltries, returned through the valley, and arrived at St. Louis early in October.
Speaking of this trip, Smith, Jackson and
I IIS TORN' OF WESTERN NEBRASKA
Sublette wrote a letter in October, 1830, to Chouteau, which found its way into the Conggressional Record. It covers a wide variety of subjects. The feasibility of carrying on traffic by wagon trains to the Columbia river country comes in for a liberal share.
( Ine quotation of interest to the North "Platte river is: "We began to fall in with the buffaloes on the Platte, about three hundred and fifty miles from the white settlements; and from that time on, lived on buffaloes, the quantity being infinitely beyond what we needed."
This directly refers to the country from Garden county to the mountains. This letter is found in Sen. Doc. 39, 21st Cong. 2d Ses.
The following spring another caravan was made up, and proceeded along the identical route, but on the return trip stopped at the mouth of the Platte. And from this time for a few years, the plan was to bring merchandise by water up the Missouri to the Platte, then by wagons into the mountains. Returning parties brought wagons to the Missouri and transferred the beaver to boats, letting the mules rest while the journey was made to St. Louis and return.
Thomas Forsyth in a letter to the Secretary of War in October, 1831, called the river "The Little Platte," and also outlined the route as above given.