Peter Skene Ogden
1790-1854Peter Skene Ogden was a Canadian fur trader and explorer who led Hudson's Bay Company trapping brigades across the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin. His expeditions supplied information for company maps and expanded its knowledge of the inland West. His southern journey of 1829-1830 connects him with the early fur-trapping history of the Mojave Desert.
Ogden was baptized at Quebec on February 12, 1790, and biographers generally give 1790 as his birth year. His father, Isaac Ogden, was a judge. Peter chose the fur trade, joining the North West Company as an apprentice clerk in April 1809.
His early career unfolded during the bitter rivalry between the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. Hudson's Bay Company officers accused him of killing a Native trader in 1816. Authorities drew up a murder indictment in March 1818, and Ogden subsequently moved west of the Rocky Mountains.
After the companies merged in 1821, Hudson's Bay Company officials initially excluded him from their service. Ogden appealed to company leaders in London and secured an appointment as chief trader in 1823.
Trapping the Snake Country
Between 1824 and 1830, Ogden led six expeditions into the loosely defined Snake Country. His brigades searched for beaver along rivers and streams across the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin.The company wanted pelts, but it also wanted to discourage American competition. Company officials directed the brigades to trap streams heavily along the southern approaches to the Columbia River country. They hoped this "fur desert" would leave American trappers little reason to enter the region.
Ogden's journals also recorded waterways, terrain, travel conditions, and encounters with Native communities. These observations helped company mapmakers piece together the geography of the inland West.
The Humboldt River
During his 1828-1829 expedition, Ogden explored the Humboldt River drainage in present-day Nevada. The river flows through the Great Basin and ends in an inland sink rather than reaching the sea.Its valley later became an important passage for California-bound emigrants, providing water and forage along much of the journey across northern Nevada.
The Southern Expedition, 1829-1830
Ogden's final Snake Country expedition took his brigade south into the Great Basin and California. Historical accounts associate the journey with the lower Colorado River and a crossing of the Mojave Desert before the party traveled north through California.The precise southern route remains uncertain. Historians differ over how confidently they place Ogden along the lower Colorado, and a visit to the Gulf of California remains unconfirmed.
His daily journal was lost in the Columbia River during the return journey. A separate expedition report survives and was published in 1949, but the missing journal complicates efforts to reconstruct his daily movements.
The expedition places Ogden among the fur traders who extended their operations into the Southwest during the late 1820s. Native communities already knew and traveled these lands. The trappers' accounts brought portions of that geography into company records and maps.
Later Career
Ogden received orders for a northern assignment in 1830 and helped establish Fort Simpson near the mouth of the Nass River in 1831. He later managed northern trading operations and became a senior official at Fort Vancouver.In 1847, he negotiated the release of captives held after the killings at the Whitman mission. This became one of the best-known events of his later career.
In failing health, Ogden moved to Oregon City in 1854. He died there on September 27. The anonymous book *Traits of American-Indian Life and Character*, generally attributed to him, appeared in London in 1853.
References
Cline, Gloria Griffen. *Peter Skene Ogden and the Hudson's Bay Company*. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974.LaLande, Jeff. "Peter Skene Ogden (1790-1854)." *The Oregon Encyclopedia*. Oregon Historical Society. Updated October 26, 2023.
Maloney, Alice Bay. "Peter Skene Ogden's Trapping Expedition to the Gulf of California, 1829-30." *California Historical Society Quarterly* 19, no. 4 (December 1940).
Ogden, Peter Skene. *Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Journals, 1827-28 and 1828-29*. Edited by Glyndwr Williams. London: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1971.
Reid, John Phillip. *Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions*. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Scaglione, John, and Peter Skene Ogden. "Ogden's Report of His 1829-1830 Expedition." *California Historical Society Quarterly* 28, no. 2 (June 1949): 117-124.
Williams, Glyndwr. "Ogden, Peter Skene (baptized Skeene) (Skeen, Skein)." *Dictionary of Canadian Biography*. Vol. 8. University of Toronto and Universite Laval, 1985.
The draft relies chiefly on Williams and LaLande. The remaining references provide further reading; I verified the Scaglione report's publication details but have not examined its full text. [www.biographi.ca](https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ogden_peter_skene_8E.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
Another Band of Beaver Hunters
Colorado River
Ogden's 1829-1830 Expedition
Owens Valley History