The adventures of a party under Ezekiel Williams occurred as early as 1807. He was a well known frontiersman, who had been employed by the Government to return to his own people, a Mandan chief who had accompanied Lewis and Clark to Washington after a military expedition had failed. Twenty men started with him. Having safely performed this assigned duty, Williams and his party started west into the mountains on a trapping trip, dividing into two detachments when they arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The Indians becoming troublesome, Williams, with eight or ten of the men, moved south along the base of the mountains until they reached the Arkansas River. Here, another separation took place, four going to Santa Fe, New Mexico, while Williams with five men, two of them Frenchmen, struck out into the mountains. While trapping, three of them were killed, and Williams, with Jean Baptiste Chaplain and a Frenchman named Parteau, sought protection among the Arapaho Indians on the South Platte River. They passed a miserable winter, but in the spring, Williams got away and floated down the Arkansas River in a canoe for over 400 miles. He was captured by Kansas Indians, and robbed of his furs, but finally reached safety in Missouri in September. The next May, he conducted a party back to the Arapaho village in search of his companions, only to learn they had probably been killed.

Explorations by Employees of the Fur Companies

The great fur companies had but little to do with the Plains except to traverse them in their journeys back and forth between the market at St. Louis, Missouri and the mountains. In the earlier days there was some trapping of beaver along the prairie streams, but this was usually done independently. In this work, nearly every water course between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains had been explored by daring adventurers, oftentimes traversing the wilderness alone. Yet, the main supply of furs was sought in the mountains, and it was to these, the great fur companies dispatched their men, generally by boats up the Missouri River, although occasionally parties struck directly across the intervening Plain, usually following the valley of the Platte. Of the two methods, it would almost seem as though that by water, was the more difficult. Against a swift current, heavily laden keel boats were slowly hauled, or "cordelled," twenty men along the shore pulling the clumsy barge by means of a line fastened high enough to be out of the way of brushwood. Where the water was shallow, the voyageurs poled single file, facing the stern, and pushing with all their power. In deeper water, oars were utilized, but in any case it was slow, hard work, involving months of unremitting labor.