With the winding down and end of the fur trade, there were many trappers and Mountain Men who were out of a livelihood.  They were victims of fashion trends thousands of miles away.  Some went back to Missouri or Ohio or someplace and started farming.  Some turned to hunting buffalo.  A lot of the experienced trappers saw the end coming and also saw the expansion of Western migration by pioneers bent on making a new life out in Oregon with fertile soil and free land.  Well, no one knew the way west and the trail to the richest farmland in the west better than these former explorers who now turned their considerable knowledge to being guides and scouts and wagon masters.   Nothing in history is so constant as is change.