Alexander Ross (fur trader)

Alexander Ross (May 9, 1783 – October 23, 1856 b. Morayshire, Scotland) was a fur trader and author.

Ross emigrated to Upper Canada, present day (Ontario), from Scotland about 1805.

In 1811, while working for John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, Ross took part in the founding of Fort Astoria, a fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River. During the same year he led a detachment up the Columbia River and founded Fort Okanogan where during the winter he was the sole PFC employee at the trading post. During his solitary posting, Ross' hair greyed from the stress of being socially isolated among the welcoming Syilx people, "savages who had never seen a white man before." Nights were a constant source of worry for the lonely Ross, despite having several hundred Syilxs encamped near by performing sentry duties. One evening his watchdog alerted Ross to an intruder.

In this perplexing dilemma I got my hand, with as little noise as possible, I got my hand, with my gun, and gradually drawing out the ramrod, tried, with my right arm streched out, to stir up the embers, so that I might see... I concluded that the enemy must be skulking in the cellar... when, lo! What was there but a skunk sitting on a roll of tobacco! The shot blew it almost to atoms, and so delicately perfumed everything in the house that I was scarcely able to live in it for days afterwards..."

Ross joined the North West Company in 1813, after they acquired all of the Pacific Fur Company properties, renaming Fort Astoria to Fort George. Ross and three Indians crossed the North Cascades on a project of discovery in 1814. Ross's account is vague but they probably crossed the mountains via Cascade Pass.

In 1818 Ross acted as scribe for a trading party from the North West Company who traveled within sight of the Teton Range in modern Wyoming. He and trapper Daniel Potts apparently viewed some of the thermal features of what is today Yellowstone National Park. Each of them produced an account of these features, with Ross reporting that "...boiling fountain having different degrees of temperature were very numerous; one or two were so very hot as to boil meat."(Breining, p. 69)

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