Character Analysis
William Ashley is the businessman who runs the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. We don't know too much about him, aside from the fact that he loves Cuban cigars, but what we do know isn't too lovely.
Ashley's skeeviness is revealed in a letter he writes to the company's investors. He's just led his men to a rousing defeat courtesy of a much smaller force of Arikara warriors. Now, this is a whole lot worse than just losing one battle—the Arikara's victory means that the fur trade is now closed.
Spoiler: that's not good if you're a fur trader. But Ashley spins the truth like a presidential candidate, arguing that this is a good thing for the traders. Read it and weep: "God had placed him in a garden of infinite bounty, a Land of Goshen in which any man could prosper if only he had the courage and the fortitude to try" (1.1.20).
Yeah—we didn't mean "weep" metaphorically, either. Ashley's fanatical, almost religious zeal for conquering the West (and lining his pockets along the way) forecasts the approaching storm of Big Business that's heading straight for the frontier…and we all know how that went.