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You are here: Home » History » The Rendezvous
The Rendezvous
by ealfish in History, April 11, 2009
The Rendezvous, an annual gathering of the mountain men and the men who made it possible.
Although it was short lived, the rendezvous was a formerly unthought-of trading plan that ignited the fur trade and gave brave ambitious people an opportunity to start a living in the west. This method was invented by William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Trading Company. It couldn’t have happened without the beaver pelt. The rendezvous way of trading replaced earlier methods of getting furs. The yearly gatherings were the greatest exchange of wealth in their time. After the pelts were traded, they were sent east to be manufactured. None of the trade, riches, or opportunities could be possible without the brave mountain men, such as Kit Carson. Indians both helped and hindered the operation. Although lasting less than a meager 20 years long, the age of rendezvous was a bright period of American history filled with opportunities.
The Rendezvous was started by the William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Trading Company. A rendezvous is a plan to meet in a certain place in a certain time. Jedediah Smith convinced Ashley to bring a caravan of supplies from Saint Louis to meet the trappers at Henry’s Fork, on the Green River, in July of 1825 instead of making a permanent trading post. From then on at each rendezvous the location of the next year’s rendezvous was announced. This cycle continued until about 1840 because the beaver population was running out and hat styles were changing.
Without beaver and their pelts, the rendezvous wouldn’t have existed because there was no need for it. The small furry mammal’s slick hides fueled the whole trade operation. Without them the trade never would have happened and who knows when further western colonization would have started.
The pelts were being made into and sold as the tall, felt, top hats that European gentleman wore. The style was kind of a fad. The rich wore nice beaver felt hats so other people wanted their own beaver felt hat so as to appear rich and upper class. Everyone wanted a hat so the hats and what they were made from, beaver pelts, became a very valuable item to own. When something is valuable people seek it out in an attempt to get rich and thus the fur trade was born.
A nice beaver felt hat was a very valuable possession. Beaver fur was tight, yet supple and held its shape far better than other, lesser, felting materials. Before a pelt could even be made into a hat it had to travel across America and an ocean to get to Europe. Then they were shipped to a hatter. To make a hat he first had to prepare the furs. First he would remove the guard hairs, hairs unsuited for making a hat. Then a solution of nitrate and mercury would be brushed on the pelt, giving it a carrot color and more matting ability. Then the pelt would be dried and the wool removed from it with a semi circular knife. Once the wool was removed it was called fluff. The finest hats called for more than one kind of fluff. Now the two kinds of fluff were carded together. Carding means organizing the furs so they are ready for the next step towards being a fully fledged hat. Now the fluff was weighed. One hat was made from 8-12 ounces of fluff. The next step was matting the fur. The first process in this stage was bowing. Bowing fluffed and cleaned the fluff. When this process was finished the fluff was in the shape of an oval and called a batt. In the next process the batt was shaped into a triangle and additional fur was added to certain areas. The hat to be was then wrapped in leather and heated. Unbeknownst to the hatter this released mercury fumes, which are dangerous. Two of the triangles were combined and shaped into a cone. In the next process the hat was dipped in a solution of sulfuric acid, beer grounds, and wine sediments. Then it was worked with the hands. This was repeated over and over again and eventually reduced the hat to half its former size. The final step was shaping and finishing. The hat was shaped, dyed, water proofed, stiffened lined and made to look generally nicer. Because of the lengthy processes involved and the long distance it had to travel a beaver felt hat was worth a lot of money.