Longhunters & Beaver Battles

John Fremont had a bodyguard of forty Mountain Men and five Delaware Indians. John’s father-in-law, Senator Benton, was in the back pocket of John Jacob Astor who sold his holdings in the Northwest when it looked like the British army would invade in 1812, which they did. The Benton family did business with the Boone family and were Longhunters, the prototype of the Mountain Men that were employed by rival fur companies in Canada and the United States. The city of Vancouver BC, and Vancouver Washington, was Beaver Battleground. The US Government subsidized these battles for control of the fur trade. I assume the Crown did the same. Civilized folks sent wild and wooly hippie-like wild men into the wilderness in order to make a few men filthy rich. Castles in England were built upon the wholesale slaughter of the beaver. If Hippies did this, then there would be a…