Most people on hearing the name Simon Fraser would say, "Simon who?", and yet this British Continentinalist is one of thee most important historical figures in history, ranking equally with the famed Lewis and Clarke in their Corp of Discovery in putting the American flag upon the lands Thomas Jefferson purchased from France.In that period the Americans almost lost the entire western frontier as Mexico sent forces it was said to intercept Lewis and Clarke to most likely murder them, the Sioux damned neared killed Lewis and Clarke, and a Scotsman from Fort William on the Great Lakes set off in 1807 on his own British stamp forever on Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, California, Montana, Minnesota and the Dakotas.
Consider that for a moment if Simon Fraser had found what he set out in his race with the Americans in Lewis and Clarke on the western frontier.
Fraser's main course was the fabled Saskatchewan River which was the whispered highway of the Hudson Bay Company and unknown to the outside world. That is what is amazing in this in everyone is so familiar with the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri watersheds, but the greatest northern watershed in the Saskatchewan is not even spoken of today.
This mighty river was the route which Fraser took though the country of the Piegans, Assiniboines, Crees, Slaves and Salteurs. He would venture up this river in it's twists and turns, but in a fate reserved for America, Simon Fraser would when Lewis and Clarke reached the mouth of the Columbia, be locked in the snows of the Canadian north at the Peace River Pass.
It would not be until the following spring when the Americans were venturing home and electrifying the States with their discoveries that Fraser would cross the divide and come to river of rapids the Indians warned him not to travel down, that Fraser in it made a wrong choice, for the river was not the Columbia, but an unnamed one like all were in that region.
The river would later bare his name as the Fraser.
His choice should have been what would have been to go down the Wood River, strike the Canoe and hook up with the Columbia at the big bend, but in 1808 Simon Fraser learned he had lost his race, and started the long journey back to Fort William.
Fraser would build for Canada, Fort St. James, Fraser and George.
There are always what ifs and if this IF was different, Canada would now possess everything west of the Mississippi. Mexico was laying claim in 1800 to all that was south. There would not have been a John Jacob Astor in the fur trade, no California gold rush, and America would have been impoverished without the buffalo, western mines, forests and railroads, all if Simon Fraser had not started late and the snows had kept him from crossing the Peace River Pass.
He really was a remarkable man in entering a wilderness as deep as Lewis and Clarke, and laying claim to undiscovered territory. No movies or television specials resound for this Daniel Boone trailblazer of Canada before the world.
At least his mark is once again made here, for though the pleasure is he lost as the Mexican empire lost, as the Indian empire lost so a greater American people could benefit the world, it is always with honor one remembers brave souls who ventured the Continent to areas which are still today as wilderness as they were in the day Simon Fraser braved a river named for him.
agtG
