New "How To" section of our website

This is an attempt to encourage an interchange of ideas, skills, and arts of the mountain man era. We encourage all to submit articles on sharing your skill w/respect to the mountain man era with others. Whether it be a way to make a knife sheath or ball bag or a delicious dutch oven recipe, please submit it to Rick "Smokinghawk" Lechner within an e-mail and he will post it within a couple of days. This way we can continue exchanges but eliminate the SPAM.

You can send articles within the body of an e-mail or as an attachment. Please use Word, Simple text, or PDF files as Rick has the Office Suite and Adobe Acrobat but not other word processing software.

Send them to: lechner@tctwest.net and put 1838 rendezvous somewhere in the e-mail title.

MOUNTAIN MAN RENDEZVOUS

19th century trappers who met on the site several times were explorers of an unmapped and exotic landscape very different than the woodlands found in the east. These adventurers lived in the west without leaving a permanent trace of their lives on the land and the undeveloped site is an appropriate memorial to their mysterious lives. Mountain men were not interested in development or civilization and they adapted their own distinct nomadic culture that was very similar to that of the Plains Indian. Since permanent structures or physical remnants of the mountain men are even rarer than even those of the Native Americans the places they were known to inhabit become more important with time.

The historic area along the Wind River still retains the flavor of the land as it looked in 1830 and 1838 when Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and a host of famous mountain men met for the annual fur trade and to re-supply. The landscape near the forks of the Wind River harbors one of the rare rendezvous sites accessible to the public and still in pristine condition. A fifteen year span of early 19th century history is represented by the site.

The 1838 Rendezvous Association is asking for the help of interested people who will work toward the goal of preserving this historic site. “We look forward to being able to treat our valuable Wyoming historic site like other important sites in the United States are treated,” says association member Lee Teter.

The Wyoming Department of Highways has been a major player in the preservation of the site and continues to press ahead in an effort to end mining in the surrounding area as soon as possible. They have assured the 1838 Rendezvous Association that they are trying to inflict as little damage to the landscape as possible and when mining is complete the site will be reclaimed. Other interested parties including officials from the State of Wyoming, Fremont County, and the city of Riverton joined with organizations such as the Fremont County Historic Society and the Wind River Muzzleloaders to secure the site and preserve it for future generations. The site was even selected as the “Lasting Legacy Project” by Riverton`s 1990 Wyoming Centennial Committee.

An annual re-enactment of the 1838 Rendezvous is part the effort to draw attention to the history and romance of the area. Reenactors, or “buckskinners” have done their part for the site, but the organization is presently in need of more members who are creative, energetic and love history. They need active members who care how the world sees Wyoming’s ancient landscape and early history. “We have a lot to do and we need help”, said an association member, “People come from all over the world to this site. European, South American, Canadian and Asian people visited the site this year and we can make their impression of American values more accurate by showing how important this site is to American history”.

First Submission -- Brain tanning info available!

Shortly after we married in August 2001, our son-in-law and daughter invited us to our first Rendezvous. We enjoyed meeting people from all over the US. We learned a lot about how and why people celebrate the Fur Trade Era. We decided we would make plans for our summer vacation to go to the next Rendezvous. We appreciated the ideas of what the Rendezvous was all about.

Our son-in-law was just getting into brain tanning at that time. My husband and I decided to try our hands at tanning. After getting our first instructions from our son-in-law, we went online to research more information. One of our sources came from braintan.com with Matt Richards. We bought various instructional books and DVDs as new editions and updates were published. In 2008, we met Jim Riggs at the National Rendezvous. He gave us some wonderful compliments on our work.

During our first year of tanning we produced only a few deer hides and about 50 elk hides, mainly because elk hides were easily available in our area. Let me say that tanning an Elk hide is an extreme workout! I would advise that for a first tanning project to start with a deer hide. Amazingly, at our first Rendezvous as Traders, we nearly sold out, so our hard work had paid off. Needless to say, we enjoyed being a part of the Rendezvous.

Since then we have learned more and more about the process of Brain Tanning. We now process mostly deer and antelope hides. Elk hides just take too much time and effort for us to have fun with. Now we were really enjoying our hobby.

Over the past 4 years, we have talked with anyone and everyone that has an opinion about how they tan hides. From all the information we gathered, we made an outline of instructions that works for us. We use the wet scrape method to prepare all of our hides for tanning.

If anyone is interested, we will be happy to share our written instructions with you. We don’t have a movie or DVD.

We will do this in the interest of keeping this dying craft going as long as possible.

WE wish to give a big thank you to all of those tanners that helped us and continue to give advice. We are constantly learning and improving our method of tanning.

Please email us at rendylady1949@yahoo.com . In the subject line write the words brain tanning.

We will answer you as quickly as possible.

Submitted by “kokopelli lady” and “bigfoot”

Marcia and Johnny Sfreddo, Craig Colorado