Étienne Provost

Étienne Provost (1785 – 3 July 1850) was a French Canadian fur trader whose trapping and trading activities in the American southwest preceded Mexican independence. He was also known as Proveau and Provot (and the pronunciation was "Provo"). Leading a company headquartered in Taos, in what is today New Mexico, he was active in the Green River drainage and the central portion of modern Utah. He may be the first man of European descent to see the Great Salt Lake, purportedly reaching its shores around 1824–25 (others claim that Jim Bridger, an American, was the first man of European descent to see the lake).

Provost was born in Chambly, Quebec, but little is known about his early life. He made his home in St. Louis, Missouri for 10 years marveling at the Arkansas River as late 1814 with Joseph Philibert. He left there with Auguste Chouteau and Jules deMun. He was imprisoned at Santa Fe, New Mexico twice.

About 1822, he returned to New Mexico as one of the early traders. He formed a partnership with a certain Leclerc to trap in the Uinta Basin.

His party was attacked by Snake Indians on October 1824 at the Jordan River near its mouth at the Great Salt Lake. Eight men were lost, but Provost survived and established trading posts on the banks of both Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake. The Jordan River was historically named Proveau's Fork.

Provost's company of trappers preceded the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in the central Rocky Mountains. In May 1825, he met Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company in Weber Canyon. After returning to St. Louis in 1826, he became an employee of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company. He continued his own trapping ventures, as well as leading AFC men on ventures on the upper Missouri River.

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