The irony of the situation was that neither party had a territorial claim to the land. Under the Adams-Onis Treaty Mountain Green was part of Mexican territory in 1825. Ogden might have argued that the British were not involved in that treaty. Still, neither company had a license to trap in Mexican territory. Gardner and Ogden, both ready to fight for territorial claims to the land, were wrong from the beginning.

Yvette D. Ison

History Blazer, July 1995

Sources: David E. Miller, ed., "Peter Skene Ogden's Journal of His Expedition to Utah, 1825," Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (1952); LeRoy R. Hafen, ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West 10 vols. (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark Co., 1965-72), vol. 4; Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Journals, 1824-25 and 1825-26, ed. E. E. Rich (London: Hudson's Bay Records Society, 1950); Jack B. Tykal, Etienne Provost: Man of the Mountains (Liberty, Utah, 1989); Archie Binns, Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader (Portland, Ore., 1967).