MtMan-List: Rubber goods

Lewis and Clark did not have a rubber boat. They carried an iron frame (made in Pittsburgh) for a "portable boat" up the Missouri as far as Great Falls where they abandoned (or cached) it. This iron frame was intended to be covered with hides and/or bark. Although we have no good description of it, it was probably something like an Irish curragh--or even like a Mandan bullboat.

John C. Fremont, in 1842-44, used rubber boats on his first two expeditions into the West. He refers to them as "India rubber" boats and mentions them in his journals as being used on both the North Platte and the Great Salt Lake. His rubber boat worked well on the Platte in 1842. The next year, on Salt Lake, he noted that the rubber boat didn't work as well since it wasn't "as well stitched together" as the one used on his first expedition. This suggests a boat made from several pieces of material sewn in some fashion. These rubber boats were 20 feet long and 5 feet wide and could carry a wagon. They were apparently inflatable (he mentions several places "filling our India rubber boat with air"). Best source for Fremont is Donald Jackson and Mary Spence (eds.), THE EXPEDITIONS OF JOHN CHARLES FREMONT, 3 vols. Univ. of Illinois Press.

If Fremont, in 1842-44, was using an inflatable rubber boat, then obviously the technology was in place to make serviceable ponchos, etc. out of rubber or rubber-coated cloth during at least the tail end of the Rocky Mountain fur trade era.