Monterey, where another Yankee skipper secured his release.
Wintering once more in California, this time on the American Fork,
he reached the coast in the spring of 1828, and followed the Umpquah
River towards the Oregon country. While he was absent, his camp was
attacked by the Indians and fifteen of his men killed. Absolutely
alone, Smith worked his way through the forest to Fort Vancouver,
where he enjoyed the hospitality of Dr. McLoughlin through the
winter. In the following spring he ascended the Columbia to the
Hudson Bay posts among the Flatheads, and made his way in the summer
of 1829 to the rendezvous of his company at the Tetons. In three
years this daring trader, braving the horrors of the desert and
passing unscathed from Indian attacks which carried off most of his
companions, opened to knowledge much of the vast country between
Great Salt Lake and the Pacific. [Footnote: H. H. Bancroft,
California, III., 152-160, citing the sources.] In 1831, while on
the Santa Fe trail, Smith and his companions lost their way.
Perishing with thirst, he finally reached the Cimaron, where, as he
was digging for water in its sandy bed, he was shot by an Indian.

Thus the active men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, in the decade
between 1820 and 1830, revealed the sources of the Platte, the
Green, the Yellowstone, and the Snake rivers, and the
characteristics of the Great Salt Lake region; they pioneered the
way to South Pass, descended Green River by boat, carried cannon
into the interior basin; showed the practicability of a wagon route
through the Rockies, reached California from Salt Lake, crossed the
Sierras and the deserts of Utah and Nevada, and became intimately
acquainted with the activity of the British traders of the northwest
coast. [Footnote: Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, I., 306.]