By Diane Euston
It’s probably no secret to some history lovers that Jackson County, Mo. became the chosen “retirement” place for many well-known mountain men and trappers. Jim Bridger (1804-1881) chose to move to Westport and later to a farm just north of 103rd Street near the state line where, although blind and “too old to work,” he retold stories of the wilderness to the children of the neighborhood.
Louis Vasquez (1798-1868), a well-known mountain man and trader, owned a fort with Bridger and later chose current-day south Kansas City as his retirement home where he lived between present day Wornall and Holmes just north of Bannister Road.
Since this area’s early history involves Indian Removal and French-speaking traders following their source of income out west as the borders of the United States moved, it’s truly no surprise that these mountain men chose to settle down in their older age here.
One man named John Gray (c. 1795-c.1843) pops up in early trading expeditions out west, but his story is still shrouded in mystery. Due to a common name (also referenced as “Grey”) and loose records in our early history, what we know about him is limited.
But what we do know is that after over two decades of exploration far west, John Gray moved to what would be Kansas City. His fascinating story is just another example of an enterprising mountain man who spent his last days right here in our backyard.
The Early Life of Ignace Hatchiorauquasha (John Gray)
John Gray’s father, William Lewis Gray (c.1758-1814) was born in Cambridge, N.Y. and was of Scottish descent. At about the age of 17, he served in the American Revolution as a guide.
In about 1780, for whatever the reason, William Gray moved to the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation on the border between New York and Canada. The reservation (known by its Mohawk name Akwesasne) spans into Quebec, Ontario and the United States and was founded in the mid-1700s by Catholic Mohawks. It still exists today.
The Mohawks were part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and in 1781, William Gray was adopted into the tribe. He was given 256 acres of land he called Gray’s Mill near current-day Hogansburg, N.Y. In about 1785, he married a Mohawk woman named Anne Marie Teionaose.
About 10 years into their marriage, their son, John was born. He was named Ignace Hatchiorauquasha after Catholic St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits. His English name was John Gray.
Due to his geographic location, it would not be surprising that John Gray grew up speaking Mohawk, English and French; he received “a white man’s education” as his father worked as an interpreter, saw mill operator and general store owner.
About 1816, John married “a mostly French, part Mohawk” Marienne (also noted as Mary Ann) Neketichon. In 1818, John was recruited along with Iroquois Pierre Tevanitagon (which Pierre’s Hole is named) by the North West Company, a Canadian fur trading business.
Fur Trapping in the Northwest
The Mohawks were a valued addition to the North West Company; according to historian Jay H. Buckley, “Fur trading employment provided an economic opportunity for hundreds of Iroquois because they could continue a hunting/trapping lifestyle among coworkers who shared similar culture, values and language, and could earn a modest living while enhancing their warrior traditions.” Buckley also notes that about one-third of fur hunters in the Pacific Northwest were Iroquois.
In addition, it was common for these Iroquois trappers to bring their wives and families along, the women using their skills preparing the furs through skinning and tanning.
In 1821, the North West Company was purchased by another fur trading business based in Canada, the Hudson Bay Company. During the 1820s and 1830s, the Hudson Bay Company saturated the Snake River country, especially in present-day Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Their goal in what became known as their “Snake River Expeditions” was to “exploit the region’s beaver population for profit and to prevent American fur traders from gaining a foothold in the area.”
John Gray began working for Alexander Ross as part of the Snake Country Brigade in 1824-1825. To be clear, this wasn’t a coveted position. It was one of the most difficult within the company and led to intense infighting.
The Iroquois employed by the Hudson Bay Company grew tired of the practices under their leadership. They couldn’t get ahead- they owed more money due to buying goods at exorbitant prices set by the company than they could bring in from trapping.
John Gray led his group of Iroquois trappers to confront their boss in present-day Wyoming. Alexander Ross wrote, “John Grey, a turbulent leader among the Iroquois, came to my lodge as spokesman to inform me he and ten others had resolved to abandon the party and turn back. . . I said by going back they would lose a whole year’s hunt. . . John answered he was neither soldier nor slave; he was under the control of no man. . . I saw John in his true colors, a turbulent blackguard, a damned rascal.”
John stood by his promise; he and a group of Iroquois left the Hudson Bay Company and trapped on their own. Along with John Gray was Gabrielle Prudhomme, Antoine Clement and Joseph Perreault as well as their wives and children. They met up with Robert Campbell (1804-1879) in the Yellowstone Country, then-clerk for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The American company was willing to offer them better prices, so about 20 to 30 people left to work for them.
While working under Robert Campbell, the Iroquois’ knowledge of the area was coveted and led to equal success for all. Campbell continued to supervise the Iroquois, and in 1827, he witnessed his first scalping. Born in Ireland, Campbell had only been in the wilderness for two years, and although known for his fairness and adaptability, the event had a lasting impact on him.
Blackfoot Indians attacked the party and an Iroquois chief was killed. The Iroquois in his party caught two Indians trying to steal from them. Campbell wrote in his journal, “They were the first Indians that I saw scalped. The Iroquois put their feet on the dead body, fastened their fingers in the hair, and running the knife around the skull, yanked the scalp off in an instant. It was a horrid site.”
Gray was known for his ability to defend himself in a pinch. Joe Meek, an employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, wrote that in 1830 on the Bear River an argument between Gray and Milton Sublette emerged (possibly over advances toward Gray’s daughter), “and in the affray Gray stabbed Sublette so severely that it was thought he must die.”
It took him months to recover from his injuries.
The heyday of fur trapping was on the decline by the 1830s due to several factors, including over-trapping, changes in fashion and western settlement. Many of these Native American employees looked to settle down with their families in communities supportive of their mixed-blood ancestry.
It just so happened that at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas (Kaw) Rivers, a group of French-speaking traders had set up a little settlement perfect for their needs.
The Kawsmouth, or Chouteau’s Town
The western border of Missouri had only been sparsely settled prior to the removal of Native Americans. In about 1822, Francois Chouteau (1797-1838) and his wife, Berenice (1801-1888), became permanent residents at the mouth of the Kansas River. They were drawn to the area so they could continue the family operations trading with Native American tribes relocated to nearby Indian Territory. The Chouteaus were part of the American Fur Company.
By the early 1820s, a French-speaking community, mostly those engaged in the fur trade, concentrated in the West Bottoms near the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers on the western border.
According to historian James R. Shortridge, about 100 people settled with them where the population contained people of pure French-Canadian descent while others were multiracial with French and Native American ancestry.
Joining them at this settlement was Gabriel Prudhomme (c.1791-1831), his wife, Josephine (a Cree Indian) and their young children. Prudhomme worked with John Gray on the Snake River when a select group of fur trappers left the Hudson Bay Company to work with the Americans. He was listed as a deserter in April 1826.
Primary sources are shaky during this time period, and sources differ on the date when John Gray, his wife, Marienne and their nine children decided to move to Chouteau’s French-speaking settlement.
John Calvin McCoy (1811-1889), founder of Westport and Kansas City, wrote, “West Kansas bottoms was then a trackless uninhabited forest until 1831 when eight families of Frenchmen with Indian wives and half-breed children came down the Missouri from its upper sources and the [Rocky] Mountains and landed at this frontier outskirts of civilization. Their names were Gabriel Prudhomme, Becket, Perriault, Sondra, John Gray and his son-in-law, Ben Lagotrie and Crevieur and his son. These all either entered or bought small tracts of land in the bottom, and commenced preparations for a permanent settlement. . . Gray was a half-breed Scotch and Iroquois.”
Although he phonetically spelled many of the surnames he listed, they do check out to be the names of some of those early settlers at the Kawsmouth. He may have been wrong about the date of 1831 for Gray, but it is known that Prudhomme purchased 267 acres of land at the heart of what would become Kansas City in that year.
Prudhomme was killed in a barroom brawl months after purchasing his land, and this opened up the organization of the Town Company with 14 original founders of what would be Kansas City – one being Robert Campbell, a St. Louis businessman who got his start in the Rocky Mountains. He was none other than John Gray’s “boss” when he left with other Iroquois fur trappers – and Gabriel Prudhomme.
Other sources note that Gray didn’t show up at Chouteau’s settlement until 1835. Records indicate he purchased 40 acres of land between the state line and present-day Genesee Street, spanning from present-day 12th Street to 14th Street in the West Bottoms in 1838.
Regardless, Gray was in good company in the West Bottoms, then known as the “French Bottoms” because so many of this community were old friends, they were of mixed-race ancestry, and there was a Catholic church built in 1835 at present-day 11th and Pennsylvania (now the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception).
But it wasn’t in John Gray’s nature to stay put for too long.
A Missionary’s Mission
A Flemish-Catholic Jesuit priest named Father Pierre Jean De Smet (1801-1873) arrived in the United States in 1821. After becoming a Jesuit priest, Fr. De Smet studied Native American culture and customs from 1824-1830.
He was able to take what he learned and establish a mission in present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa to serve the Potawatomi.
Fr. De Smet heard that Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest had basic knowledge of Christianity from none other than the Iroquois that fur trapped in the region years earlier. In 1840, he traveled to the region with a group from the American Fur Company, saying Mass in Wyoming and baptizing around 350 Native Americans near Pierre’s Hole.
Fr. De Smet’s goal was to establish a mission in present-day Montana, and he needed a group of people to get him there. He hired fur trader, Indian agent and mountain man Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799-1854) as captain and was accompanied by Jesuit priests Nicholas Point and Gregory Mengarini along with four friars. Hired as a hunter, John Gray was a perfect fit for this expedition; he knew the land well, had positive relationships with the tribes, was multilingual and he was fearless.
On May 10, 1841, the missionary party left Westport, Mo. headed west. They were joined nine days later by an inexperienced party of 69 people led by John Bartleson (1786-1848), a man who settled in southern Jackson County near the Cass County line as early as 1833. The party, later known to history as the Bidwell-Bartleson party, were the first overland emigrant train to successfully reach California.
A large part of their success was due to the fact they waited for the missionary party that accompanied the group to present-day Idaho.
De Smet wrote in his journal, “We had a hunter named John Gray, reputed one of the best marksman of the mountains, he had frequently given proofs of extraordinary courage and dexterity, especially on one occasion he dared to attack five bears at once.”
He continued, “Wishing to give us another sample of his valor, he drove an enormous buffalo he had wounded, into the midst of the caravan. They had stood about fifty shots, and been pierced by more than twenty balls; three times he had fallen, but fury increasing his strength, he had risen after each fall, and with his horns threaded all who dared to approach him. At last the hunter took a decisive aim, and the buffalo fell to rise no more.”
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only account of John Gray’s courage when it came to grizzly bears. Warren Ferris wrote in the 1830s in his diary, “John Grey, a herculean trapper, has fought several duels with [bears] in which he has thus far been victorious, though generally at the expense of a gun, which he usually manages to break in the conflict.”
The event Fr. De Smet described was certainly memorable to the missionaries. Fr. Nicholas Point sketched the scenes he saw on his journeys ministering to Native American tribes, and he drew the event with five grizzly bears in his 1841 sketchbook.
He also took the time to sketch a portrait of John Gray and a moment when Gray and others of “eight nations” gathered in a tent on this trip to establish St. Mary’s in present-day Montana.
The mission, founded near the Montana-Idaho border, was the first permanent settlement by non-indigenous people in what would become the state of Montana.
John Gray left the party of missionaries prior to their final destination, departing near Independence Rock in central Wyoming.
A Surprising End to John Gray
John returned home to his family in Jackson County, Mo. after his final travels out west and settled back on his small farm in the West Bottoms. One of his daughters, Cecilia, worked as a “fine needlewoman” for Berenice Chouteau before she married and had a family of her own.
Apparently, the French-speaking settlement along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers wasn’t as peaceful as one would have hoped. According to John Calvin McCoy, John Gray was “killed by the wife of Perriault, who was a native of the Snake tribe, and the only Indian I ever saw to have red hair.”
Another account states he was “knifed to death” in 1843 and another states he was “gunned down” by this Snake woman “who was a bitter enemy of his family.”
A little further investigation into the records which do exist show a Peter Perriland (also spelled Poullard) was a neighbor of Gray’s – and his wife’s name was Margaret.
In all likelihood, this is the same family that is noted as being an “enemy” of the family, despite the misspellings and lack of further documentation. There was no trial or arrest seen in the records which do remain.
What can be stated with high confidence is that John Gray – the intense fighter of grizzly bears who stabbed Milton Sublette- was killed by a Native American woman.
Our area is full of ironic surprises!
John’s wife, Marienne later moved with some of her children near Fort Scott, Kan. where she died in 1860.
John Gray made his permanent mark in the Rocky Mountains. Grey’s Hole and Gray’s Lake in Idaho and Greys River in Wyoming were named after the tumultuous, unrelenting, strong mountain man. He may have only lived in what would be Kansas City for a brief time, but it was really his first established home with his family that he ever had.
Tucked away deep in the records of our great city are countless stories of pioneers who, with little inhibition and loads of guts, blazed the trails in the wilderness, unafraid of the unknown. When we think of mountain men, John Gray isn’t the first to come to mind; regardless, he made a permanent mark on this country and in the chronicles of Kansas City history.
John Gray’s name is oftentimes in records spelled “Grey,” but most descendants use “Gray,” thus the chosen spelling in this article.
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