Editing Jedediah Smith (section)

==Death==
[[File:Comanches.jpg|thumb |right |200px |[[Comanches]] as depicted in the 1830s.<br />Painting by Lino Sánchez y Tapia (''1830s'').]]

[[File:Map of Santa Fe Trail-NPS.jpg|left|thumb|The Santa Fe Trail]]

Having no response from Eaton,{{sfn|Morgan|1964|p=323}} Smith joined his partners and left St. Louis to trade in [[Santa Fe, New Mexico|Santa Fe]] on April&nbsp;10, 1831.{{sfn|Morgan|1964|pages=325–27}}  Smith was leading the caravan on the [[Santa Fe Trail]] on May&nbsp;27, 1831, when he left the group to scout for water near the [[Wagon Bed Spring|Lower Spring]] on the [[Cimarron River (Arkansas River tributary)|Cimarron River]] in present-day southwest Kansas.<ref>Utley and Dana (2004), "After Lewis and Clark: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific", p. 99</ref> He never returned to the group. The remainder of the party proceeded on to Santa Fe hoping Smith would rendezvous with them, but he never did. They arrived in Santa Fe on July&nbsp;4, 1831, and shortly thereafter members of the party discovered a [[comanchero]] with some of Smith's personal belongings.{{sfn|Morgan|1964|p=330}} It was relayed that Smith had encountered and communicated with a group of Comancheros just prior to his approaching a group of [[Comanche]].{{sfn|Barbour|2011|p=269}}  Smith tried to negotiate with the Comanche, but they surrounded him in preparation for an attack.{{sfn|Morgan|1964|p=330}}

Most likely, the death of Jedediah Smith occurred in [[Territorial evolution of Mexico|Northern Mexico Territory]], south of present-day [[Ulysses, Kansas|Ulysses]], [[Grant County, Kansas]] at [[Wagon Bed Spring]].  None of his colleagues were witness to his death and the following accounts are conjectural or imagined, although possibly based on hearsay and third-hand information. According to Smith's grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Smith, there were 20 Comanches in the group. Smith attempted to conciliate with them until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the left shoulder with an arrow. Smith fought back, ultimately killing the chief of the warriors.{{efn |The number of indigenes killed by Smith was most certainly embellished over the years. Another account of Smith's death is that found in his obituary. "Some indians" trapped Smith in a box canyon, he was shot with a bullet, not an arrow, and upon that he shot both the chief and the man behind him with the "same ball".<ref name=Molter />}} The version written by Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, in a letter to their brother Ira four months after Jedediah's death says that Jedediah had killed the "head Chief," but nothing about any other Comanche being wounded or killed.  [[Josiah Gregg]] wrote in 1844 that Smith "struggled bravely to the last; and, as the Indians themselves have ''since'' related, killed two or three of their party before he was overpowered."<ref>{{cite book|last=Gregg|first=Josiah|title=Commerce of the Prairies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a2a_kC2zm6QC|location=Norman|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|year=1954|orig-date=1844|page=65|isbn=978-0-8061-1059-2}}</ref>{{efn|Another later version stated that three Comanche were killed.<ref name=Guinn/>}}  Ezra Delos Smith stated that his grand-uncle had fought so valiantly that the Comanche believed "he had been more than mortal, and that he could be immortal it would be better to propitiate his spirit; so they did not mutilate his body, but later gave it the same funeral rites they gave its chief"<ref>Smith, Settlement, op. cit. pp. 258–59</ref>{{efn|Ed Lewis, a descendant of an early Kansas rancher, tells a story of the skeletal remains of two men found on his grandfather's property along the Cimarron River, which he speculated were Smith and the Comanche chief.  That, as well as the fact that a search two days later had found no sign of Smith's body<ref name=Molter /> give some credence to Ezra Smith's version.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Death of Jed Smith |last=Lewis |first=Ed |url=http://www.santafetrailresearch.com/cimarron-cutoff/jedediah-smith-ed.html |website=Santa Fe Trail Research by Larry & Carolyn St. John |access-date=April 10, 2016 |archive-date=March 31, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160331174713/http://www.santafetrailresearch.com/cimarron-cutoff/jedediah-smith-ed.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Smith |first=James |editor=Joe J. Molter |title=2009 Fall Rendezvous |journal=Castor Canadensis |publisher=The Jedediah Smith Society |url=http://www.jedediahsmithsociety.org/JSS%20Winter%2009.pdf |year=2009 }} {{dead link|date=April 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>}}  Austin Smith, who along with another Smith brother, Peter, was a member of the caravan, was able to retrieve Jedediah Smith's rifle and pistols that the Indians had taken and traded to the Comancheros.<ref>Barbour p. 268</ref>{{efn |At some point, Peter Smith had taken possession of one of Smith's pistols, as it was in the possession of his daughter, Jedediah's niece, in the late 1800s.<ref name=Guinn/> It was ultimately stolen in 1961. See <ref>{{cite web|title=More Images of Jedediah Strong Smith |website=Jedediah Smith Society |url=http://www.jedediahsmithsociety.org/images2.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130411195735/http://www.jedediahsmithsociety.org/images2.html |archive-date=April 11, 2013 }}</ref>}}