This dreamy, Mona-lisa-with-a-beard  face is the early image of Captain Joseph Walker, the first white man to ever lay eyes on Yosemite and a beaver trapper extraordinaire. (I gathered much of this information from various websites, but warmest appreciation goes here.) He trapped beavers in Missouri and Wyoming and Colorado and Idaho and New Mexico, and then, when the beavers were mostly gone from  those states he was invited  to go to California to kill ours.

Walker met Captain L.E. Bonneville in Oklahoma. The Captain had just been granted a two year leave from the army to go “trap beavers” (hmm, maybe a little reconnaissance?), and he asked Walker to invest in his venture. Walker politely declined and  must have said something like “gosh, I hope all those indians don’t kill you before you get a chance to starve”, because then Bonneville thought it over and asked him to join the expedition as field commander. This offer he accepted.

One hundred and ten men with extra horses, mules, and twenty wagons left Independence, Missouri, the first of May, 1832 —most history books say Fort Osage. The wagon train cut across the Plains to the Platte River, and then followed the North Platte to the Sweetwater River. At the 1833 rendezvous on Horse Creek, Bonneville’s one hundred plus men had twenty-two and a half packs of furs. The overwhelming majority of these plews were taken by Walker’s men.

Need some context? A pack was 90 lbs. It took about 60 beaver skins to make a pack.  That’s 1350 beavers killed in a year. Bonneville decided this was enough of an adventure for him, so he took the skins, the biographer and most of the men back to base camp and left walker with instructions to figure out the waterways  ahead.  Although he did not risk his own neck any further, he was fairly thoughtful about theirs.

Each of Walker’s 40 menn were provided with four horses, and an equal share of blankets, buffalo robes, provisions, and every article necessary for the comfort of men engaged in an expedition of this kind.

There is some controversy about whether the instructions were to find the pacific or the source of the Great Salt lake, but a passport was obtained for Walker to enter the Mexican territory of California so that seems to be a clue. Bonneville went back home and became very famous when Washington Irving (of Ichabad Crane fame) wrote his tale into a best seller and gave him credit for pretty much everything.  Lucky for Walker he ended up with a biographer too, since Zenas Leonard went along as his book keeper and wrote down details that became one of the most exciting and accurate reads of the early trapping trade.

By most accounts, Walker was a fairly calculated, thoughtful  leader. He was not one to drink more than a toast, but he relied on a good smoke from time to time. He was cautious about how he dealt with the natives, and generally made sure his men were too.

The natives which we occasionally met with, were the most poor and dejected kind – being entirely naked and very filthy. As we continued to extend our acquaintance with the natives, they began to practice their national failing of stealing. The great annoyance we sustained in this respect greatly displeased some of our men, and they were for taking vengeance before we left the country – but this was not the disposition of Captain Walker

These discontents being out hunting one day, fell in with a few Indians, two or three of whom they killed, and then returned to camp, not daring to let the Captain know it. The next day while hunting, they repeated the same violation – but this time not quite so successful, for the Captain found it out, and immediately took measures for its effectual suppression.

Of course this didn’t stop him from having the entire crew circle 30 indians and shoot them later, but he did make sure no one killed anyone without his permission.  After what appears to be a round about look at mono lake  and several dead horses they passed into this view from up high

Unable to reach the valley’s floor, Walker led his party westward along a mountain ridge between two deep canyons. The only way off the ridge was to zigzag back and forth off a steep mountain slope. At one point, a sheer rock ledge blocked the way, and the horses were lowered with ropes. As preparation to lower the horses began, a hunter returned with a small deer. This was the first wild game larger than a rabbit killed since the fourth of August.

There’s no evidence that they went into the valley but they did tromp around Tuolumne Grove long enough to notice that those were REALLY BIG TREES. Then  they headed to the coast and met up with the captain of the ship there who told them of the usual hot spots around the bay; San Francisco, Monterey, Bodega Bay. They ended up asking permission to stay at in California for the winter, and were given the right to hunt only for their own needs. After this, Walker decided they needed an easier way out of the mountains and looked south for a pass, which was later named “Walker Pass” accordingly. They wandered through the Owen’s Valley and to the edge of death valley desperate for water and making moccasins for the remaining horses whose hooves were cut by the rocks.

In the end the company lost 64 horses, ten cattle and 15 dogs in the Nevada desert before getting back to the Humbolt. Walker met back with Bonneville in 1835 and continued to trap with 50 men in the mountains. A year later he fell in love with a Shoshone indian, married her and she became his constant companion. The lessons he had learned in trapping beaver became profitable for settlers seeking gold and a pass over the sierras so he was in high demand.

Many of the immigrants sought Walkers advice on travel to California. The Hastings Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake desert was being strongly touted back east. Walker strongly advised against this route. The only ones to ignore his advice were the Donner-Reed party—it was so hard to cross the salt flats they become snow bound in the Sierra Mountains (near Truckee) and forty-four of them died.

Walker and his wife eventually retired to Manzanita Ranch at the foot of Mt. Diablo. Bonneville became a household name (or at least a pontiac name) and Walker is nearly forgotten. Companion Daniel Connor had this to say about Walker;

“I was with him [Walker] two years of his last explorations of our mountain country under the most desperate hardships and still I could never see any change in him. Always cool, firm, and dignified. I never heard him tell any wonderful story. He was too reticent about his certainly bleak and wild experiences and he was never given to saying foolish things under any circumstance. Brave, truthful, he was as kindly as a child, yet occasionally he was ever austere. I was but a boy and he kept me out of dangerous places without letting me know it or even know how it was done.. . . my greatest concern is the fear that his character will never be known as well as it ought to be. His services have been great and unostentatious, unremunerated and but little understood. Modesty was his greatest fault.

Why is this a chapter in Castor Coincidences?  Well as fate would have it turns out that this is the final resting place of Captain Joseph Walker and his family:

This is his view which you may recognize. I think he can see our beavers from there.