Background
Hiram Martin Chittenden was born on October 25, 1858 into the rural life of upstate New York farm country, the son of William F. Chittenden and Mary Jane (Wheeler) Chittenden.
Hiram Martin Chittenden was born on October 25, 1858 into the rural life of upstate New York farm country, the son of William F. Chittenden and Mary Jane (Wheeler) Chittenden.
Hiram Martin Chittenden decided early on that he wanted more - more education, more opportunities for social advancement, and greater access to the world beyond the family farm. When a scholarship to Cornell University and an appointment to West Point Academy both landed within his grasp, he took advantage of both opportunities. He attended Cornell just long enough to get a solid grounding in the liberal arts, then entered the Academy where he graduated third in his class. After graduating from West Point, Chittenden earned a law degree.
Hiram was on military assignment in New York City. From there he was transferred to the Department of the Platte, in Omaha, Nebraska, then to the Missouri River Commission, and finally to Yellowstone Park, where he served from 1891 to 1893.
It was during this last assignment, when Chittenden oversaw the park's road construction, that awoke Chittenden's urge to write. In the spare time he found between engineering duties at Yellowstone, on the Louisville and Portland Canal, and in Ohio, he composed Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive (1895). This, Chittenden's first contribution to the history of the American West, remained for years an authoritative source on the history, geology, and geography of the Yellowstone region, as well as a tour guide to the park's features and amenities. In the course of writing this first book, Chittenden made the acquaintance of George Bird Grinnell, a prominent ethnologist who had done significant research on the Cheyenne, and Elliott Coues, an ornithologist and the editor of the journals of Lewis and Clark's historic journey across America. These two established scholars served as Chittenden's mentors as he refined his skills as a historian.
Chittenden's writing career had to be fitted into his service with the Army Corps of Engineers, and that was not always an easy task. In the mid-1890s, he was sent to Wyoming and Colorado to gather information on the functions of reservoirs and to survey for prospective reservoir construction sites. His final report, published in 1897, was instrumental in the formation of a federal policy on irrigation for the Western states. It was also the last major assignment Chittenden received for quite some time, which, in the words of Gordon B. Dodds, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "led to a turning point in his life and in Western historiography." Finding more free time on his hands to pursue his personal interests, in 1896 Chittenden set himself the task of writing a history of the fur trade, a subject that had first caught his interest during his research for The Yellowstone National Park. In this new endeavor, he drew upon the solid liberal arts background he had secured for himself at Cornell, as well as his training in the law. Most important, he had made the acquaintance of the Chouteau family, descendants of one of the great fur-trading families of the Northwest. They made their family documents available to Chittenden, and these materials formed the core of his book The American Pur Trade of the Far West (1902).
Pour years in the making. The American Fur Trade of the Far West established Chittenden's reputation as historian and scholar. It covered the history of the trade and the organization of the trading houses, as well as the history, geography, and geology of the region in which the trade was conducted. Immediately upon publication, it became the definitive study on the subject of the Northwestern fur trade - a status it retains, even today. The acclaim for this work was not (and is not) universal, however. A self-taught historian, Chittenden was less than asiduous in documenting his sources, and he has been taken to task for neglecting the beaver trade of the American Southwest, but no one has faulted him on the grounds of factual error. His careful approach to researching his subject resulted in an astonishingly accurate manuscript.
Chittenden went on to write two other histories in relatively quick succession. The first was The History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River (1903), based largely on the oral history of retired river pilot and captain Joseph La Barge. Within the framework of one man's reminiscences, Chittenden managed to incorporate a broader discussion of the implications of steamboat travel for this region of the country, from its impact on settlement and exploration to Indian-white relations. It, too, achieved authoritative status, which it retained for nearly sixty years, until it was supplanted by the definitive A History of Steamboating on the Upper Missouri River penned by William E. Lass (1962).
Chittenden next turned his attention to chronicling the life of nineteenth-century Jesuit missionary. Father Pierre Jean De Smet. For this he sought the collaboration of Alfred T. Richardson, a former newspaper editor. Richardson brought his superior skills as a linguist to the project, which entailed the translation and editing of the missionary's voluminous correspondence. The result of their collaboration. Life, Letters, and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet. S.J., 1801-1873. appeared in print in 1905. As a scholarly work, this volume was not as successful as Chittenden's two earlier efforts, but it remains a useful resource for amateur historians and general readers.
Shortly after the publication of this final historical volume, Chittenden was transferred by the Corps of Engineers to serve as district engineer in Seattle, WA from 1906 until his retirement in 1910, after which he served as president of the Seattle Port Commission until 1915. His writings from this period focus on conservation and international affairs. Intellectually active up to the time of his death, in 1917, he also produced a volume on the futility of war (War or Peace: A Present Duty and a Future Hope, 1911) and a volume of nature poems (Verse, 1916).
Chittenden married Nettie M. Parker in 1884 and they had four children: Eleanor, Hiram Martin Jr., Theodore.