What did mountain men do?

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Their activities opened that region of the United States to general knowledge. Since the days of French domination there had been expeditions to the upper Missouri River, and in the early 19th cent. there were several expeditions to and through the mountain country, notably the Lewis and Clark expedition , the land voyage to Astoria and the return voyage under Robert Stuart , and the ventures of the Missouri Fur Company. The mountain region was still virgin fur-gathering country, however, when William Henry Ashley led his trading expedition up the Missouri in 1822. Of the men who accompanied him, many were to spend most of the next few decades living in the mountains, sharing the hardships of Native American life, learning the paths, the rivers, and the peaks, and gathering furs. Unlike the Hudson's Bay Company , which maintained permanent forts in the wilderness and bartered with the native people for their furs, Ashley's group had no traders, no permanent forts, no Native American trappers. The mountain men more often than not gathered the furs themselves and brought their harvest to an annual rendezvous at some previously appointed spot in the fur country. There they received their year's wages and obtained new supplies for the fall hunt. Because they spent many years together in the mountains they were known then and thereafter as the mountain men. They were a tough and self-reliant crew, able to deal with and fight the Native Americans and to survive in the wilderness alone. The mountain men were members of loose companies; after Ashley retired, the company of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette was formed, to be succeeded by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The annual rendezvous was an occasion of rough celebration—for many of the mountain men the nearest approach to civilization that they had for several years at a stretch.