By the summer of 1808, John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, and Edward Robinson had been at Fort Raymond for more than six months and had received no news from “the States” since their departure from St. Louis in the spring of 1807. Nor would they hear of any happenings in the East for another thirteen months, but this was a fact of life among those who ventured to the Rocky Mountains as hunters and trappers. Still, they had seen their share of fascinating events, and like those in St. Louis, they had watched as Manuel Lisa dodged another scrape with danger.
George Drouillard, Peter Weiser, and John Colter, the three Lewis and Clark veterans sent out the previous fall to the Crow and other Indian nations, had all returned safely by spring, and while the first two provided valuable information about present Wyoming and Idaho, Colter had the most amazing story to tell. As Washington Irving wrote in 1837, Colter had discovered “natural curiosities, which are held in superstitious awe” by the Crow. “A volcanic tract . . . on Stinking River . . . was first discovered by Colter, a hunter belonging to Lewis and Clarke’s exploring party, who came upon it in the course of his lonely wanderings, and gave such an account of its gloomy terrors, its hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious streams, and the all-pervading ‘smell of brimstone,’ that it received, and has ever since retained among trappers, the name of ‘Colter’s Hell!’”[1]
The men had hardly had time to trade opinions about these claims before Lisa dispatched the ever-active Colter once again, this time “to the forks of the Missouri, to endeavor to find the Blackfeet nation, and bring them to his establishment [at Fort Raymond] to trade.” Lisa was apparently hoping that the Blackfoot Indians near Three Forks would not know of (or not care about) Meriwether Lewis’s violent encounter with Blackfoot warriors a few hundred miles to the north in 1806. Unknown to Lisa, of course, Charles Courtin and his men had founded a post at Three Forks late in the summer of 1807 and were still there.[2]
Colter, however, had neither the chance to meet Courtin nor to appeal peacefully to any Blackfoot Indians because he “fell in with a party of the Crow nation, with whom he staid several days.” The Crow were accompanied by a large number of friends from the Salish tribe—often called Flatheads—and the combined party was “attacked by their enemies the Blackfeet. Coulter, in self-defence, took part with the Crows.” A friend of Colter’s (who got the story from Colter) reported that eight hundred Crow and Salish were pitted against fifteen hundred Blackfoot. “The battle was desperately fought on both sides,” with the Blackfoot first engaging the Salish, “whom they attacked in great fury. The noise, shouts and firing brought a reinforcement of Crows to the Flat-Heads, who were fighting with great spirit and defending the ground manfully.” Colter “distinguished himself very much in the combat,” and although he was “wounded in the leg, and thus disabled standing,” he “crawled to a small thicket and there loaded and fired while sitting on the ground.” When his allies took the upper hand, the Blackfoot band retreated, although they “retired in perfect order and could hardly be said to have been defeated.” But they would not forget that they had “plainly observed a white man fighting in the ranks of their enemy.”[3]
Colter made it back to the fort, probably assisted by Crow friends, and was recovering from his wound when a fabled dispute broke out between Lisa and one of his trappers—and it wasn’t Bouché. After a long sojourn among the Crow, where he made fast friends and adapted surprisingly well to Indian life, Edward Rose had returned to Fort Raymond, arriving sometime in June, “about the time Mr. Lisa was completing his arrangements for descending the river to St. Louis. Rose was, of course, called upon to show his ‘returns,’ or account for the goods,” but flattered by the Crow villagers he had lived with, he had freely given away all of his trade supplies, down to the last bead. “Whether he reported his goods as lost in crossing a creek, or whether he reported them stolen by the Indians,” is not known, but Lisa was not happy. He and Rose were alone in the counting room when Rose decided he had heard enough of Lisa’s haranguing and “sprang, like a tiger” upon Lisa, overpowering him, and “would probably have killed him, had not the noise of the scuffle brought a man, by the name of Potts . . . to the relief of Mr. Lisa. His coming saved Mr. L., but he suffered severely by the interference.”[4]
Taking no thought for Potts, another of Lewis and Clark’s men in the group, Lisa hightailed it out to his boat “with the intention of embarking immediately,” but as the boat “swung around into the current” of the Yellowstone River, the enraged Rose “ran to a swivel . . . and quickly directing its line of fire, ‘touched it off’ with his pipe.” A barrage of buckshot volleyed through the cargo box of the keelboat, but miraculously injured none of the crew, which included Drouillard. “Rose immediately commenced re-charging the swivel, but was prevented from completing his object by the intervention of about fifteen men”—likely including Hoback, Reznor, and Robinson—“who could barely restrain the effects of his ungovernable passion.”[5]
Lisa made his escape, probably viewing his arrest several weeks later in St. Louis as tame by comparison, and within days Rose packed up “whatever goods he could wheedle or frighten out of those remaining in the fort, and started for the Crow nation,” where he immediately gave the goods as gifts, adopted Crow “dress and costume, head-gear and all, exchanged a favorite rifle and accoutrements for a wife, and slung a bow and quiver to his back.” He “seemed born” for Crow life, “almost always recklessly and desperately [seeking] death where it was most likely to be found. No Indian ever preceded him in the attack or pursuit of an enemy.”[6]
As summer turned to autumn, autumn to winter, and winter to spring, the men at Fort Raymond saw nothing of Rose, perhaps concluding he was gone forever, but Hoback, Reznor, and Robinson had not see the last of the “celebrated outlaw.”
Any discouragement Ramsay Crooks and Robert McClellan had felt as they canoed back up the Missouri in late September of 1808 only deepened during the long winter. The trader Joseph Robidoux III and his six sons (one of whom founded St. Joseph, Missouri) had established a virtual monopoly in the local Indian trade, so business was bad. On top of that, the value of fur had plummeted and was likely to continue dropping as long as the embargo was in place. Then one of Crooks and McClellan’s men was killed by unknown Indians. Given all of this, it was hardly a surprise that the partners prepared an announcement:
Take Notice
The partnership formerly subsisting between us under the firm of McClellan and Crooks, is this day disolved by mutual consent.
All persons indebted to said firm are requested to make immediate payment and those who have claims on the same, will present them to Ramsay Crooks; who is fully authorized to settle all the affairs of said partnership.
Robert McClellan
Ramsay Crooks
Black Snake Hills, River Missouri, 17th Feb. 1809[7]
As soon as weather permitted, Crooks launched his canoe southward, making what had essentially become his annual spring pilgrimage to St. Louis (this was the fourth year in a row he had made the trip). The first matter of business was delivering his and McClellan’s announcement to Joseph Charless, editor of the Missouri Gazette, who printed it on April 12, leaving Crooks to an uncertain future. His partnership with McClellan had seemed so promising—he must have felt a pang of regret at the dissolution of the company and how circumstance had conspired against him and McClellan. The amazing thing was, this young man Crooks, now a veteran Missouri River trader, was barely twenty-two years old. Given the good reputation he had established, his prospects were good, regardless of his exact plans. But whatever intentions he had remain a mystery because circumstance suddenly turned in his favor. Within weeks he probably regretted delivering the notice to Charless so promptly. Indeed, he soon acted as if he and McClellan had not composed and published the announcement at all—although McClellan wouldn’t know for months, Crooks and McClellan were back in business.
The exact sequence of events is not known, but about the same time the notice ran in the Gazette, a surprising but welcome report came from Washington: on March 1, three days before leaving office, Thomas Jefferson had signed legislation repealing much of the embargo act. The National Intelligencer had flooded the capital with extra copies of its newspaper, proclaiming the news bound to thrill farmers, trappers, shop owners, entrepreneurs, businessmen, and laborers of all stripes, for although the embargo had ostensibly been aimed at foreign countries, especially Britain, the Americans were the ones who had felt the brunt of it. Fur prices would certainly jump, and trade goods would be much more accessible.
The other piece of good news came from a young St. Louis businessman by the name of Wilson Price Hunt. Only four years older than Crooks, Hunt had arrived in St. Louis from New Jersey in 1804 and formed a partnership with John Hankinson. As James P. Ronda has written, “The two were general-merchandise agents, selling everything from soap and grain to whiskey and boats. They even dabbled in the fur market, trading with the Chouteaus and Astor’s St. Louis agent, Charles Gratiot.”[8]
Crooks, of course, had had frequent dealings with St. Louis merchants and almost certainly knew Hunt. It does not seem unreasonable to conclude, with David Lavender, that Hunt approached Crooks with the “electrifying news” that Crooks and McClellan were being invited “to join an expedition being formed by John Jacob Astor to follow Lewis and Clark’s route to the Pacific.” According to Lavender’s scenario, Hunt suggested that an advance party headed by Crooks and McClellan could “press up the Missouri ahead of the main overland group and prepare a winter base for the overlanders to use the following winter, 1810-1811.”[9]
Not only did this development resurrect Crooks and McClellan’s trading hopes, it offered an incredible opportunity for them to compete with or even surpass their chief enemy: Lisa. The monopoly that Lisa had reluctantly initiated during the fall of 1808 and the subsequent winter was the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. Although Lisa, Pierre Menard, and William Morrison had each claimed furs worth an impressive $2,667.50 from Lisa’s 1807 expedition up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers (with Lisa receiving an additional $985.00 for leading the group), they worried that other well-connected traders in St. Louis—and there were several—could dart in front of them. They were apparently therefore “constrained to take part with others in order to avoid a ruinous competition.”[10]
As William E. Foley has noted, this venture “attracted a host of notable investors who joined together to forge a powerful alliance linking business and government. The firm’s list of subscribers read like a who’s who of Upper Louisiana’s commercial and political power brokers.” On March 7, 1809, Lisa, Menard, and Morrison were joined by William Clark, Pierre Chouteau and his son Auguste Pierre, Benjamin Wilkinson, Sylvestre Labbadie, Andrew Henry, and Reuben Lewis in signing the articles of incorporation of the new company. Governor Meriwether Lewis, who “in all likelihood, was a secret partner in the new firm,” was determined to break the British stranglehold on upper Missouri trade and “agreed to give [the company] free rein in the region by suspending all trading restrictions there.”[11]
Of course, two names conspicuously missing were Crooks and McClellan, and there is no indication that they were invited to join the new company. Not only that, but the subagent who had assigned them to the Black Snake Hills, either Reuben Lewis or Auguste Pierre Chouteau, was now a partner in the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company and had likely seen hints or intimations of future developments before making the assignment. Such a one could not be expected to be impartial. All of this would have thrown Crooks and McClellan into an unwinnable situation, but the offer from Hunt tipped everything topsy-turvy. Although they had not yet signed an official contract, Crooks and McClellan had the prospect of going up the river backed by a tycoon with considerably more capital and connections than anyone in St. Louis.
Presumably carrying a letter of credit from Hunt, Crooks hurried north, leaving in May. He had to get to Michilimackinac and purchase trade goods as soon as possible. He had no time to waste because the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company had garnered a hefty contract to travel up the Missouri, and Crooks wanted to be right behind them.
This contract was hardly a run-of-the-mill agreement between private parties. In a move that would simply be unthinkable in the twenty-first century (and was even objectionable in the nineteenth), “His Excellency Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the . . . Territory of Lousiana, and Superintendent of Indian affairs” had agreed to pay a company that included his brother and his best friend $7,000 to escort Sheheke and his family back to their North Dakota home (the same assignment McClellan had sought in the spring of 1807). Not only had Lewis leveraged his position to give the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company an unfair advantage over their competitors—particularly Crooks and McClellan—he had drawn up and executed the contract on February 24, 1809, two weeks before the company partners had even signed their own articles of agreement (and, by mere coincidence, one week after Crooks and McClellan had signed the announcement of their dissolution). And although the contract listed its ostensible objective as the “safe conveyance and delivery of the Mandan Chief, his Wife, and child, to the Mandan Nation,” there was no doubt that this well-financed journey up the Missouri would give Pierre Chouteau, the commander of the detachment, and his associates an unparalleled opportunity to make crucial trade agreements on the way. Making this trade advantage explicit, the contract specifically promised that Lewis would not “authorize any other person or persons to ascend the Missouri any higher . . . than the Mouth of the River La Platte, for the purpose of Trading with the Indians,” nor “permit any party accompanying the said detachment or any other party, to ascend the River, go before or in advance of the said detachment commanded by said Choteau from the mouth of the said River La Platte, to the Mandan village.”[12]
Not only would the company be well compensated for its efforts, it was virtually guaranteed first trading rights with the Omaha, Yankton Sioux, Lakota Sioux, Mandan, and Hidatsa Nations.[13] We have no record of how Hunt and Crooks responded to this amazing course of events, but perhaps they were content in the hope that their well-financed expedition would give them ample opportunity to establish their own monopoly in the Rocky Mountains and along the Pacific coast. Crooks simply made plans to purchase goods and supplies and ascend the Missouri right after Chouteau’s group. To run matters as smoothly as possible, Crooks apparently brought in a new man to assist with the operation. His name was Joseph Miller, and according to Washington Irving, he was “well educated and well informed, and of a respectable family of Baltimore. He had been an officer in the army of the United States, but had resigned in disgust, on being refused a furlough, and had taken to trapping beaver and trading among the Indians.”[14] In a few years, Miller would achieve a rather unique status among the founders of the Oregon Trail: he would be the only man who set out with the westbound Astorians and returned with the eastbounders but never made it to Oregon or the Pacific Ocean, even though he saw his share of present South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho.
Miller likely recruited men and arranged for a keelboat as Crooks went north for goods. Meanwhile, Chouteau and the partners who would go upriver with him—Lisa, Menard, Henry, Labbadie, and Reuben Lewis—tried to get their massive mission off the ground. The contract required them to enlist 120 men, 40 of whom had to be Americans and expert riflemen. They also had to “furnish the said detachment . . . with good and suitable Fire Arms, of which at least fifty shall be Rifles, and a sufficient quantity of good Ammunition.” Then came an endless list of supplies that included everything from knives, gun slings, coats, axes, spades, rope, awls, iron spoons, portable soup, and lamps and wicks to glass beads, needles and thread, spun tobacco, red silk handkerchiefs, and fishing hooks (all gifts for the Indians), to canoes, paddles, chains, boat hooks, calomel, lancets, and ointment. Lewis and Clark had gone to great lengths to equip and feed around 50 men traveling in one keelboat and two pirogues, and yet the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company had to provide for approximately 350 men going upriver in thirteen keelboats and barges, accompanied by canoes of all shapes and sizes. It was little wonder that a list of partial expenses showed $6,171.14¼ worth of goods purchased from F. Regnier and Company and another ₤6,861/98/6 worth provided by Pierre Chouteau. But it was not quite as understandable how the company could miss a crucial deadline. The contract plainly demanded a departure date of April 20, which could be postponed to May 10 in the event of “any unforseen accident.” And even though the penalty for not leaving by May 10 was a fine of “three thousand dollars, lawful money of the United States”—almost half the scheduled payment—and even though no unforeseen circumstances interfered, Chouteau and his group of about 160 men did not depart until May 17. Smaller groups followed over the next few weeks, and Lisa finally got away exactly one month later, on June 17. Luckily, Governor Lewis did not impose a fine.[15]
Among the men who signed on with Lisa was Thomas James. Born in Maryland in 1782, he was an experienced frontiersman who was hired as steersman or “captain” of one of the barges. He had twenty-four men, all Americans, under his command. James said the expedition was “raised for trading with the Indians and trapping for beaver on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers.” He enlisted for three years with the expectation of receiving traps and ammunition when the men arrived at the hunting grounds, as well as the assistance of four hirelings, or engagés. (“The ‘company’ made us the fairest promises in St. Louis, only to break them in Indian country,” wrote James.) The outspoken and observant James kept a journal of the trip, and although he lost the journal, he later described the voyage in fascinating detail in his book, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, which he published in 1846, one year before his death. The volume not only makes for compelling reading but also offers the only full-length account of the first—and most historic—mission of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company.[16]
In the course of his travels, James met up with Hoback, Reznor, and Robinson at Fort Raymond in 1810 and with them survived a Blackfoot attack. By that time, he was well acquainted with another man who would also survive the hostilities, “a Yankee, named Pelton, . . . a jovial, popular fellow” who was a crewmember on the barge captained by James. Archibald Pelton “greatly amused the company in coming up the river, by his songs and sermons. At every stopping place he held a meeting for the mock trial of offenders and exhorted us in the New England style to mend our courses and eschew sin.”[17] Like John Day and Miller, Pelton would go west with Hoback, Reznor, and Robinson—and Crooks and McClellan—making his name as a founder of the Oregon Trail. His story would be entertaining, exciting, astonishing, and ultimately heartbreaking.
Another member of the crew would become a well-known and well-respected mountain man, with a “fabulous career spanning the period from Lewis and Clark to the Civil War.” He was “most evidently calm, cool, competent, highly efficient and effective, not prone to homicide, drunken celebration or other colorful habits.” His name was John Dougherty, and he was only eighteen when he signed on with the company in 1809. Over the course of his long career in the West, Dougherty was never employed by Astor’s American Fur Company—“he was, in fact, a noted adversary of that company”—but he shared trials, adventures, and narrow escapes with Hoback, Reznor, Robinson, and Pelton.[18]
James and his crew viewed Lisa with contempt. “He . . . bore a very bad reputation in the country and among the Americans,” wrote James. Lisa and some of his colleagues “required all the boats to stop in company for the night,” but James’s barge was “large and heavily loaded, [and] the crew frequently had great difficulty in overtaking [the other boats] in the evening.” Rather than sympathizing, Lisa “lorded it over the poor fellows most arrogantly, and made them work as if their lives depended on their getting forward, with the greatest possible speed.”[19]
James’s contingent was hardly the only unhappy crew. On reaching the mouth of the Osage River, Menard wrote that he and the other partners found “about eighty men, of which one half are American hunters and almost all revolted. It was necessary to make new arrangements with them, but I hope all will be better in the future.” But things did not improve, and Lisa sent Clark regular reports about men who had deserted. By June 24, approximately eighteen men had defected. A week later, Lisa wrote to Clark that two more men, John Davis and John Bly, had deserted and taken company rifles with them. “We are going very slow,” Lisa continued. “We left a large Barge”—because they didn’t have a crew to man it. “Reuben Lewis commands the Boat in which the americans are together”—the same boat James was steering—“two men for each oar and still they complain. I am fearful that more will desert and that we shall be obliged to leave another Boat.” Lisa ended the gloomy letter by informing Clark that four or five men were sick.[20]
On July 8, the exasperated Lisa reached Fort Osage, where a few small comforts of home might have been enjoyed, but he had nothing but worries. He urged Clark to “make all possible diligence to arrest our deserters” if they arrived in St. Louis. “I wish you to see Mr Chouteaus Son and enquire where, those deserters have left their plunder, I wish you to have them punished, for they have made us suffer.” Lisa also included the amounts these men owed the company—down to the half cent. He wrote of more sickness, of having to leave a boat and a quantity of corn behind “for want of men,” of five barrels of pork “found to be rotten, not fit for use.”[21] It was one thing after another.
But Lisa was also fretting about something else: Crooks had arrived at Fort Osage, and Lisa was worried that Crooks and McClellan might try to get to the upper Missouri before the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company men. “Mr Crouks left this [place] yesterday to join Mr McClellan,” wrote Lisa. “He said and promised that he would wait for us [at the mouth of the Platte River]. If we do not find him there I will be obliged to take an assortment [of men] and go after him with my boat which is the fastest going boat we have.”[22]
His streak of good luck continuing, Crooks had made a quick trip southward on Lake Michigan by boarding the sailing ship Selina and having his barges towed behind. Leaving a crew behind to transport the goods, he likely “hurried ahead in a conoe or light bateau to St. Louis. There he gave the bills of lading for the barges to Joseph Miller, so that Miller could transfer the material to a keelboat and start it up the Missouri.”[23]
As Lisa mentioned to Clark, Crooks had left Fort Osage on July 9, on his way to meet McClellan (and no doubt bring him up to date on all the surprising news). But when Lisa suspected that Crooks might break his pledge and rush up the river, he was simply revealing that he did not know Ramsay Crooks very well. Governor Lewis had legally restricted travel on the Missouri, and, as Hiram Martin Chittenden wrote, Crooks was a “vigorous and relentless enemy when he took up a contest,” but “he opposed clandestine, quite as much as open, violations of the law.” Although Crooks spent most of his life “connected with a business where the temptation to use lawless methods was so great, there is no record of any attempt on his part to do anything that he had not a legal right to do.”[24]
James wrote that a few weeks after leaving Fort Osage “our allotted provisions gave out and we were compelled to live on boiled corn, without salt. At the same time all the other boats were well supplied and the gentlemen proprietors in the leading barge were faring in the most sumptuous and luxurious manner. The French hands were much better treated on all occasions than the Americans.” The irony was, the boat that James and his comrades were rowing and pulling up the meandering Missouri was loaded down with thirty barrels of pork that the Americans were not allowed to touch. Their resentment turned to anger and their anger to fury. “Their boiled corn without salt or meat, did not sustain them under the fatigue of navigating the barge,” wrote James, “and the contrast between their treatment and that of the French enraged them.” In a scene reminiscent of Rose’s assault on Lisa a year earlier, some of the crew threatened a mutiny. A Tennessean “about six feet high and well proportioned,” who “figured as ring-leader on this occasion,” was a man by the name of Cheek; one day when the flotilla stopped at noon he rolled a barrel of pork onto the deck, raised a tomahawk, and cried out to James, “Give the word Captain.”[25]
James forbade opening the barrel and “went ashore to find Lewis, who had left the boat at the beginning of trouble.” When James confronted Lewis, the latter hurried to a nearby boat where Lisa had gathered with several other partners. “I could see them in their cabin, from the shore where I stood,” James remembered, “playing cards and drinking.” When Lewis announced that “James’ crew were taking the provisions,” Lisa “seized his pistols and ran out” to confront James. “What the devil is the matter with you and your men?” he asked. “We are starving,” James answered, “and we must have something better than boiled corn.” Meanwhile, “Cheek was brandishing his tomahawk over the pork barrel and clamoring for the ‘word’ . . . while the rest of my crew were drawn up in line on the boat, with rifles, ready for action.” Lisa and the others relented and gave the crew a large supply of pork. A few days later, the pork was removed and replaced with a supply of lead.[26]
Things had changed considerably in the two years since Lisa had ordered a man shot for deserting. Now he sought no retribution for James’s men but left well enough alone. “We continued our ascent of the river without any occurrence of importance,” reported James. “Below Council Bluffs we met Capt. Crooks, agent for John J. Astor, and who was trading with the Mohaws [Omaha Indians].”[27]
True to his word, Crooks had waited for the Missouri Fur Company men. And although James did not mention McClellan, Dr. William Thomas, the company surgeon, who was riding on James’s boat, recorded further details: “August 1st arrived at the river Platte on the south side. Met with Mr. M’Clelland, waiting for the Ottos, whom he expected in great numbers to trade with.”[28]
Although Thomas had encountered a long line of influential and noteworthy men during the trip up the river, he had offered no commentary on any of them, but Crooks’s partner was an exception. Showing an admiration for McClellan that was not untypical, Thomas wrote: “Mr. M’C[l]elland has weathered many storms in his life, and it appears that each day seems to throw something bitter in his cup; brave, generous and kind, he meets the untutored Indian with the smile of complacency,” adding that, if in peril, McClellan “discovers exalted courage, surrounded with Indians, with his rifle, pistols, and sword, he bids defiance to whole nations; threatening or executing extermination to all who attempt to plunder him.”[29]
Crooks and McClellan continued their trade with the local Indians—they could not proceed north until Miller arrived with the keelboat. The company partners and their men, of course, pushed on up the river, enjoying good weather and relative calm among the hands. They were about thirty miles south of present Sioux City, Iowa, when they reached the Omaha Indian village. Dr. Thomas noted that it was situated “on a prairie on the south side [Nebraska side], four miles from the river, resembling at a distance, the stack yard of an extensive farmer, having their huts in the form of a cone, about 15 feet high. Their council house is built in the centre, large enough to contain 300 men; the materials consists of split sticks and pieces of timber; covered with earth.”[30]
A few days earlier, the Omaha had lost several warriors in a skirmish with the Sioux, but this did not prevent them from greeting the American traders, and with a festive meal. “Here we were served with the first dish of dog meat,” wrote Thomas. “[I]t is esteemed delicate, and none partake of it but those they wish to honour.” Sheheke was the guest of honor—he had donned “an elegant full dress suit of regimentals, with his horse covered with the most showey ornaments, he set out accompanied by thirty Maha chiefs on horse back, in their best dress.”[31]
Whether the group met Pierre Dorion Sr. during or before this feast is unknown, but Meriwether Lewis had told Chouteau that Dorion had “been ordered to join you at the mahas Village and Place himself under your direction.” Chouteau had been contractually obligated to hire at least two interpreters in St. Louis, and Lewis had recommended Noel Mongrain, Joseph Gravelines, and Baptiste Dorion (son of Pierre Sr. and brother of Pierre Jr.). Which of them actually accompanied Chouteau is unclear, but Dorion Sr.’s services would be invaluable regardless. No man was better qualified to act as interpreter and negotiator as the armada made its way into Yankton, Lakota, and Arikara territory.[32]
The ubiquitous Pierre Dorion Jr. was also hired as an interpreter for the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company in 1809; Washington Irving wrote that Pierre Jr. “conducted their traders in safety through the different tribes of the Sioux,” proving himself “faithful and serviceable.”[33] Since he is not known to have joined the company in St. Louis (and was not mentioned by Lewis) it is quite likely that he and his father enlisted together at the Maha village in August. Since the company seemed financially solid and planned on making regular trips up and down the Missouri, Pierre Jr. had every reason to seek long-term employment with them. That arrangement would have worked out fine for both parties because his skills were highly desired. During his stay at Fort Mandan, however, Pierre Jr. got himself in a predicament that would directly impact his decision to go west with the Astorians.
So, with two and possibly three Dorions aboard, the motley collection of keelboats, barges, canoes, businessmen, clerks, steersmen, boatmen, hunters, trappers, engagès, and even a physician continued up the river, leaving their Omaha friends on August 13. The Dorions did not disappoint, and conflicts with both the Yankton and Lakota (who understandably wanted to trade for the valuable goods being delivered to Sheheke’s people) were avoided. Meeting the Arikara Nation, of course, was a different matter because of how the Arikara had attacked the party of Pryor and Chouteau and killed several men two years earlier. There had been no contact between the Arikara and the U.S. government since then, and Governor Lewis had ordered harsh measures, telling Chouteau to have the Indians most responsible for the attack (or others substituted in their place if necessary) “shot in the presence of the [Arikara] nation,” and to incite the Mandan and Hidatsa Nations to attack the Arikara if needed. Fortunately, Chouteau took a much more judicious approach. His team arrived in the area on September 12. “On approaching their village,” wrote James, “we took precautions against an attack. A guard marched along the shore, opposite to the boats, well armed. My crew composed a part of this force. When within half a mile of the village we drew up the cannon and prepared to encamp.” Chouteau reported that “the Ricaras expecting their Village was to be attacked, sent away their Old men, women and children.” Nor would the Arikara chiefs agree to sit in council with Chouteau. When he finally convinced them to do so, he announced: “The first time you Permitted Yourselves to fire upon the colours of your father, and to attack his men. I have orders to destroy your nation, but the chiefs of the sioux and mandan nations have United together and interceded for your pardon. . . . You may call Back your old men, your wives and children.”[34]
The Arikara “expressed extreme sorrow at the recollection of their own differences with Lieut. Prior; and their profuse hospitality in given [giving] corn and meat, evinced their satisfaction at the return of friendly intercouse.” Chouteau thus negotiated a new peace, and the Arikara chiefs took Sheheke by the hand, begged his forgiveness, and guaranteed his secure passage this time. Indeed, a week later, Sheheke arrived safely at his home—after a three-year absence. Not only had Chouteau accomplished his key mission of “the safe conveyance of the Mandan Chief, his Wife, and child, to the Mandan Nation,” he had averted any further violence, even though “five or six hundred of the ricaras believing they would be attacked had Provided themselves with Guns, Amunition and Horses.”[35]
Two independent accounts of this crucial meeting with the Arikara noted that when Chouteau’s men first approached the Indian villages, a mysterious horseman appeared. “An old chief rode out at full speed,” wrote James, “and with violent gestures and exclamations, warned and motioned back his countrymen from before our cannon. . . . He supposed we were about to inflict a proper and deserved punishment . . . [and] drove back all who were coming out to meet us.” Reuben Holmes picked up a similar narrative, merging his story seamlessly with that of James and describing the rider’s “dress and comparisons [as] those of an Indian dandy: . . . On his head was a dress of eagle and raven’s feathers, worked in porcupine; his war club, adorned with plumes and ribbons, was in his hand, and his bow, ready strung, was brought around in front of his body, apparently for immediate use, if necessary.” He rode a white stallion, a gift from an Arikara chief, which was marked with the red impressions of a man’s hand, one of which was placed in the middle of the horse’s forehead. The horseman’s face “was painted, one half red, and the other half black. Such was the appearance of the man who came to the shore where the boats lay.” But this reinsman was not an old man at all—he wasn’t even an Indian—and some of the experienced engagès making their second or third trip up the Missouri discovered his identity “by the gleam of his eye (the only natural thing about him).” Much to their “surprise and amusement,” they realized the man who had approached the shore at a full gallop was their old confidant Edward Rose.[36]
Although he had left Fort Raymond to dwell among the Crow, Rose had soon moved farther east, into Arikara country, “and was received by them in the most friendly manner. Here he was a perfect Indian. There was not an article of dress, or of any other description about him, that was not purely Indian.” Earning the respect of the Arikara by learning their language and by acting with his usual reckless courage, Rose had gained enough trust to act as their emissary. But now, as he approached the keelboats and barges lining the shore, “surprise awaited Rose also, for, contrary to his expectations, he found Mr. Lisa in charge of the boats. He knew that he had cause to be remembered, and he knew that Mr. Lisa was not the man to forget the scene which had passed between them at the mouth of the Yellow Stone.” Rose was right—he certainly had cause to be remembered—he likely would have killed Lisa a year earlier if John Potts had not interfered. What Lisa was thinking he never said, but he soon approached with a rifle in his hand. The unpredictable Rose engaged Lisa in conversation and “pretended to explain his former conduct. He laid the blame upon those who were with him among the Crows, and after telling a long story about things that never occurred, Mr. Lisa became, to all appearance, reconciled.”[37]
Although he may have vowed never to rehire Rose and likely even plotted revenge, Lisa was first and foremost a businessman, a pragmatist who “saw that Rose might be useful to the company—first by refraining “from instigating the Indians, which it was in his power to do,” and second by “furnishing information, interpreting, &c.—and [Lisa] accordingly again employed him.”[38]
On September 22, the Dorions witnessed the joyous homecoming of Sheheke, his wife, Yellow Corn, and their five-year-old son, White Painted House. Minutes after landing, Chouteau’s barges were “soon crowded with natives, and mutual congratulations took place” as the wanderers were “received with the greatest demonstration of joy.” Sheheke, outfitted in “his full dress of uniform suit,” was presented with a majestic horse, which the newly arrived chief “displayed considerable taste in dressing . . . in scarlet and gold laced housings, with a highly mounted bridle and saddle.” Sheheke had returned with a bundle of impressive presents, including “[g]oods, wares, Merchandizes[,] articles, and utensils,” which his friends the Hidatsa chiefs eagerly awaited. “However,” observed Dr. Thomas, “their hopes were vain: Sheheken was as anxious to retain his property, as they were to receive it.” Although Chouteau had demanded that Sheheke distribute the gifts, the chief declined. “This seemed to occasion Jealousies and diffculties among all the tribes,” wrote Chouteau, “and the more so as ‘One Eye’ the Great Chief of the minnetaries (Hidatsa) had in a quarrel a few days before murdered one of the principal men of the mandans.” But Sheheke insisted on keeping the goods to himself, oblivious to the implications. “To Prevent Any further misunderstandings,” said Chouteau, “and to appease the Jealousies which had been Created by the refusal of the mandan Chief to have the presents distributed, I distributed among them Sixty Pounds of Powder, and one hundred & Twenty Pounds [of balls] . . . and ten pounds of Vermillion, and one hundred and fifty Pounds of tobacco, which seemed to restore harmony amongst them.” Sheheke’s reputation, however, was hardly restored, and Dr. Thomas noted that “murmurs took the place of mirth, and on our departure from the village, [Sheheke’s] popularity was on the decline.”[39]
This was not the outcome Chouteau had hoped for, but he and his partners had nevertheless fulfilled their part of the agreement by delivering Sheheke safely to his home. Now they got down to other matters of business. First of all, they were concerned by reports that the North West Company “had erected a fort at the three forks of the Missoury. This information is believed to be true from the Circumstance of about thirty american hunters, who had used to visit the mandan Village, not being seen nor heard of since about Eighteen months.” Had Chouteau been able to investigate this alarming news, he would have found that neither the North West Company nor Hudson’s Bay had built a fort at Three Forks. The post in question had been built by Courtin and his men in 1807. By 1808, however, Courtin had crossed the Rocky Mountains and entered Salish country, where he built a fort on the Jocko River (which flows into the Flathead River) near present Ravalli, Montana. As Harry Majors speculated, Courtin “was most likely driven across the Continental Divide to the Flathead country by a war party of [Piegan Blackfoot] during the fall of 1808.” If a Blackfoot war party had driven Courtin west, it could have been the same group that fought a battle against Crow and Salish enemies earlier that summer along the Gallatin River—the battle in which Colter was wounded.[40]
John McClallen—or Zachary Perch—and his men were less than ten miles northwest of Courtin’s new post, near present Dixon, at the confluence of the Jocko and Flathead Rivers. He and Courtin must have met, but any record of their interaction has been lost. McClallen and his men were presumably continuing to trap beaver and cache the valuable pelts, but getting those pelts back to St. Louis presented serious challenges. First because the hostile Blackfoot Indians stood in the way and second because McClallen’s group was on the wrong side of the watershed. They could not load their merchandise into a boat and float downstream—like the trappers at Fort Raymond could do (assuming Indians along the way would let them pass). Using water transportation, at least initially, was therefore out of the question because the Flathead, as well as other rivers in northwestern Montana, flowed north, right into areas dominated by the likes of David Thompson, Finan McDonald, and other Canadian trappers. What McClallen had in mind is not clear—perhaps he hoped to build friendships with the Blackfoot, or find ways to avoid them. Regardless, there is no indication that he had attempted to send beaver packs back to St. Louis since arriving in the Rockies in 1807.
Although Chouteau and his partners knew nothing of Courtin or McClallen, they soon got a report from Benito Vasquez, who had been in charge of Fort Raymond for the last year. The news wasn’t good. More than one group of hunters had tried to trap the beaver-rich Three Forks area, but Blackfoot warriors had driven them all out—probably about the same time Courtin had fled west. A group of four men led by Casè Fortin had sent word of hiding twenty packs near Three Forks before presumably crossing the Divide to winter with the Salish Nation. They were never heard from again. Another group had gone south to trap the “River of the Spaniards,” apparently Wyoming’s Green River, and still another, led by a promising young trapper by the name of Baptiste Champlain, had headed into Crow country. Vasquez and those remaining—Hoback, Reznor, and Robinson quite likely among them—had closed up the fort and returned to the Mandan villages to await the next expedition coming up the Missouri.[41]
If Vasquez had offered a preview of Colter’s amazing adventure, the partners got the full story when they traveled ten or twelve miles above the Hidatsa villages to construct the company’s main trading post. “Information was received here,” wrote Dr. Thomas, “that the Blackfoot Indians, who reside at the foot of the mountains, were hostile. . . . One of the survivors, of the name of Coulter, who had accompanied Lewis and Clark, says, that he in company with another was fired on by these Indians.” Colter’s companion was John Potts, the man who had saved Lisa from Rose’s wrath, and the two of them left Fort Raymond for Three Forks as soon as Potts recovered from the beating administered by Rose. Surprised by a large Blackfoot war party as they were trapping the Jefferson River, Colter and Potts knew they had no chance of escaping. Convinced he was already a dead man, Potts raised his rife and shot one of the warriors. He was immediately “made a riddle of,” as Colter later said. In the first published account of what would become one of the most celebrated legends in Western lore, long since known as “Colter’s Run,” Dr. Thomas wrote that Colter’s “canoe, cloathing, furs, traps and arms were taken from him, and when expecting to receive the same fate as his comrade, he was ordered to run off as fast as possible; which he coldly complied with. Observing one of the young men following at full speed, armed with a spear, he pushed on to some distance, endeavouring to save his life. In a few minutes the savage was near enough to pitch his spear, which he [had] poisoned, and threw with such violence as to break the handle and miss the object.” Colter now “became the assailant, turned on the Indian and put him to death with the broken spear. Naked and tired he crept to the river, where he hid in a beaver dam from the band who had followed to revenge the death of their companion. Having observed the departure of the enemy, he left the river and came to the Gros Ventres, a tribe of the Mandans, a journey of nine days, without even mowkasons to protect him from the prickly pear, which covered the country, subsisting on such berries as providence threw in his way.”[42]
Dr. Thomas never saw the area of Colter’s escape himself and likely had only a vague notion of Colter’s route, but his account was largely confirmed by subsequent, more detailed versions, including one by the best-selling author Washington Irving that memorialized Colter’s Run.
Thomas James heard the story along with Dr. Thomas, and then took care of more practical matters: his own supplies had been confiscated by the company, contrary to his signed contract, according to James, so he bought from Colter “a set of beaver traps for $120, a pound and a half of powder for $6, and a gun for $40. Seeing me thus equipped, Liza, the most active, the meanest and most rascally of the whole, offered me new and good traps, a gun and ammunition. I told him he appeared willing enough to help when help was not needed, and after I was provided at my own expense . . . I prepared to begin business.” James and two partners then felled a tree, built their own canoe, and paddled up the Missouri to trap on their own.[43]
Pierre Dorion Jr. took up residence at the new trading post, hunting, trapping, negotiating with Indians, and taking on any other tasks requested by the company. With Toussaint Charbonneau and Sacagawea living in the area, Dorion may have met them, especially since he and Charbonneau had so much in common—they were both French-speaking interpreters born to Canadian heritage. Both had lived along the upper Missouri for years; both were married to Indian women; both had assisted Lewis and Clark, but this was their first opportunity to meet because Charbonneau had joined the captains after Dorion had completed his service. Of the two, Dorion had a better reputation—because of both his language skills and his work ethic. As Washington Irving observed, Dorion was reliable when sober, but “the love of liquor, in which he had been nurtured and brought up, would occasionally break out, and with it the savage side of his character.” It was this weakness that “embroiled him with the Missouri Company. While in their service at Fort Mandan, on the frontier, he had been seized with a whiskey mania; and, as the beverage was only to be procured at the company’s store, it had been charged in his account at the rate of ten dollars a quart.”[44] How many quarts Dorion consumed is not known, but the clerks at the store allowed him to run up a considerable bill, something that would eventually push Dorion and his young family into the West, with all its allures and dangers.
Disappointed that Vasquez’s report had not been more favorable, the company partners were still optimistic that a large force could successfully harvest the plentiful beaver at the source of the Missouri River. Reaffirming that Chouteau and Lisa would return to St. Louis (as originally planned), the partners also decided that Henry would take forty men on horseback and go overland to Fort Raymond while Menard and his men traveled to the same location by boat. In the spring (of 1810) the combined party would proceed to Three Forks. Menard confessed in a letter to a friend that “the manner of some of my associated displeases me. I love to see things done frankly, which is not at all the case here and often causes small difficulties.” Giving weight to James’s accusations, Menard added that he was “obliged and forced to say that we are wrong at least three times out of four with the engagès and the hunters. Thank God this is about to end.” As for trapping at the convergence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers, Menard acknowledged, “It is said that one cannot imagine the quantity of beaver that there is [at Three Forks], but there is the difficulty of the savage Black Feet who plunder often.” Despite all this, Menard found reason to be hopeful. “I have a lot of confidence in the party of Mr. Henery. He admits everything perfectly with his humor as well as his honesty and his frank manner and without beating around the bush. I will also say to you . . . nobody sees clearer than I the advantages and resources of the Missouri. There is no doubt that if one finds the means to exploit it, it will make him a great fortune.”[45]
Indeed, company partners and trappers alike set their sights on 1810 as the dawn of a new era, when the tremendous potential of the Missouri would begin to be realized. “Expectations were high: the company hoped to obtain three hundred packs of beaver in the first year—a small fortune worth as much as $150,000.”[46] Within months, however, Henry, Menard, and all the others would be sorely disappointed.
In August of 1806, as Lewis and Clark descended the Missouri, Clark composed a letter to Charbonneau, who had remained at the Hidatsa villages with Sacagawea and their son Baptiste. Clark expressed his affection for Baptiste, whom he called “my boy Pomp,” and offered to “educate him and treat him as my child.” Clark added this promise: “Charbono, if you wish to live with the white people, and will come to me I will give you a piece of land and furnish you with horses cows & hogs.” Charbonneau had declined this offer in 1806, but by 1809 he had changed his mind. When Chouteau and Lisa and their men left the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in early October, Charbonneau’s little family was aboard one of the keelboats, hoping to take advantage of Clark’s kind offers.[47]
Of the trip down the river, Chouteau wrote: “On my return I saw at the river Platte Messrs. McClellan, Crooks and Miller who were licensed to trade & Hunt in the Upper Parts of the Missoury. In passing the Prairie Sioux [Lakota] they with a party of chosen men had been stopped, and Fortunately saved themselves by stratagem, taking advantage of the Night and returned to pass the winter where I saw them.”[48]
For the second time in three years, Crooks and McClellan had been thwarted in their attempts to reach the key trading center at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in present North Dakota. Thomas Biddle fleshed out the incident in an 1819 letter: “Encouraged . . . by the attempt of the Missouri Fur Company, they followed their boats in the spring of 1809. They were met, however, by the Sconi band of the Sioux [Lakota], who refused to permit them to pass, and compelled them to remain among them. By affecting to submit, and commencing to erect houses, the Indians were thrown off their guard; and the party, taking advantage of their absence on a hunting excursion, embarked with their goods, and descended the river to the Ottoe village, where they passed the winter of 1809-’10.” Biddle added that Crooks and McClellan “have always attributed their detention by the Sioux to the Missouri Fur Company, or some of its members, who to procure themselves a passage, informed the Sioux that the boat coming up was intended to trade, and that they must not permit her to pass. Considering the character of Indian traders, when in competition, the fact is very far from being improbable.”[49]
According to Hiram M. Chittenden, a band of Lakota, “some six hundred strong, appeared upon a high bank in a concave bend of the river and ordered the boats to turn about and land farther down the stream.” Crooks and McClellan had no choice but to obey, so they “set about making a post with every appearance of good faith.” Seeing this, most of the Indians traveled to their village some twenty miles distant to obtain articles to trade, leaving only a handful of warriors behind to guard the Americans. Crooks and McClellan leveraged the situation to “carry out in part the purpose of their expedition and also to revenge themselves upon the Indians. They clandestinely sent a party of hunters and trappers up the river in a canoe with directions to collect such furs as they could and to await favorable opportunities to return.” As soon as the hunting party was thought to be well beyond Lakota country, the others packed up their goods and supplies, “left a message for the Indians not calculated to mollify their feelings,” and raced down the river.[50]
Biddle’s assertion that Crooks and McClellan “attributed their detention” to “some” members of the Missouri Fur Company was a classic understatement. The two partners blamed one member of the company for the betrayal—Lisa—and they were enraged. Neither ever said why they suspected Lisa, but they could have heard it directly from the Lakota. If so, they would have been reminded of Pryor’s claim two years earlier that Lisa had betrayed him in a similar way. That accusation had come from a Mandan woman who had no reason to lie. Whatever the source of their information, Crooks and McClellan were convinced that Lisa was the culprit—they had to be particularly incensed that they had honored their pledge to wait for the Missouri Fur Company boats only to find themselves cut off from the upper river. Chittenden is correct in his assessment that “of direct evidence [of Lisa’s involvement] there is none.”[51] But there is also no doubt that Lisa worried about Crooks and McClellan going upriver surreptitiously and no doubt that he was fully capable of deceiving the Lakota into holding the duo as virtual hostages.
Chittenden states that Crooks and McClellan spent the winter near Council Bluffs, “on the west bank of the river a little above the mouth of Papillon Creek and therefore near the latter site of Bellevue [Nebraska].” They did their best to carry on trade, but things did not turn out well. On June 10, 1810, Charles Gratiot wrote John Jacob Astor that “Mr. Crooks who had been equipped from [Hunt] last fall, is returned [to St. Louis] yesterday from his Winter ground, which has been very indifferent on account of the Indians being at War with each other during the Season.”[52]
Chouteau, Lisa, their crew, and their passengers—Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Pomp—arrived in St. Louis on November 20, 1809. There was no chance to exchange pleasantries with whoever greeted them because they instantly heard the news—the only news being talked about in St. Louis: Meriwether Lewis was dead. “But what has been my surprise since I arrived here three days ago,” Chouteau wrote in a letter. “I learned of the tragic and untimely death of Gov. Lewis.”[53]
Less than two months after his thirty-fifth birthday, as he traveled to the nation’s capital, Lewis had died a lonely death in the backwoods of Tennessee in the early morning hours of October 11. The only details available had come from newspaper articles, with a touching tribute running in the Missouri Gazette on November 2:
By last mail we received the melancholy account of the premature death of his Ex’y. Governor Lewis; he landed at the Chickasaw Bluffs much indisposed, and shortly after set out on his way to the Federal City via Nashville; about 40 miles east of the river Tennessee, the party stopped for the night and became much alarmed at the governor’s behavior, he appeared in a state of extreme mental debility; and before he could be prevented, discharged the contents of a brace of pistols in his head and breast, calling to his servant to give him a bason of water; he lived about two hours and died without much apparent pain. The governor has been of late very much afflicted with fever, which never failed of depriving him of his reason; to this we may ascribe the fatal catastrophe! Alas Lewis is no more—his bodily conflicts are over—his days have been numbered—the scene is closed for ever—He was no less conspicuous for his native affability, suavity of manners, and gentleness of disposition, than those domestic virtures which adorn the human character—a dutiful son, an effectionate brother, a kind and feeling friend.—Reader, picture to thyself, the poignant feelings of a fond and doting parent on being informed of the death of a son, whose general worth was highly appreciated by those who knew him.
Adieu! kind friend, thy own harmonious ways,
Have sculpur’d out thy monument of praise;
Yes: they’ll survive till times remotest day,
Till drops the bust, and boastful tombs decay.[54]
To make matters worse, Lewis’s best friend, the one man who could have brought a sense of calm to the distraught city, William Clark, was nowhere to be seen. He had left on an extended trip to the East on September 21, the day before Chouteau’s party had safely delivered Sheheke and his family to their home. Clark would not return to St. Louis for ten months.
In a prescient insight into how Lewis’s death portended a gloomy future for the Missouri Fur Company, Robert Lucas, son of the prominent St. Louis judge John B. C. Lucas (who had presided over Drouillard’s murder trial) wrote to a friend: “The hopes of the Fur Company which ascended this River have died with their patron and benefactor Gov. Lewis[.]” From the reports of Chouteau and Lisa, continued Lucas, “the situation of the Compy is critical and the prospects of advantage commerce but slender except the Mandan and ricara Nations, all the Missouri Indians were unfriendly & inclined to Commit depradations in the Property of the Company.”
1. Irving, The Rocky Mountains, 1:223. According to Merrill J. Mattes, this was the first published reference to “Colter’s Hell,” showing that the term “was clearly not invented by Clark, Brackenridge, Thomas James, or John Bradbury, who were personally acquainted with Colter and talked with him after his mysterious journey of 1807-1808” (“Colter’s Hell,” 255.) Irving correctly placed Colter’s Hell on the Shoshone River, not in present Yellowstone Park, as some have mistakenly done.
2. Major Thomas Biddle, Camp Missouri, Missouri River, to Colonel Henry Atkinson, October 29, 1819, American State Papers, p. 202; Morris, “Charles Courtin,” 31–33.
3. James, Three Years, 26; Biddle to Atkinson, October 29, 1819, 202.
4. Holmes, “Five Scalps,” 8–9.
5. Ibid., 9–10.
6. Ibid., 10–11.
7. Missouri Gazette, April 12, 1809.
8. Ronda, Astoria and Empire, 50–51. Background information from Elliott, “Wilson Price Hunt.”
9. Lavender, Fist in the Wilderness, 108, 113. As James P. Ronda points out, the correspondence between Astor and Hunt has been lost, “so it is difficult to trace either Astor’s intentions or Hunt’s pursuits of his employer’s instructions.” Ronda adds: “There can be no doubt that Crooks, McClellan, and Miller—all future Astorians—made such a journey on the Missouri in 1809. But whether they did so as advance agents for Astor remains in doubt.” At the same time, Ronda acknowledges that Hunt and Hankinson dissolved their partnership in June of 1809 (a possible indication that Hunt had begun working for Astor) and that in June of 1810 Charles Gratiot wrote to Astor “that Hunt had been Crooks’s supplier ‘last fall.’” In addition, Thomas James, who met Crooks and McClellan on the river during the summer of 1809, called Crooks Astor’s agent. (Empire, 53, 54.)
10. Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 65; Douglas, Manuel Lisa, 67.
11. Foley, Wilderness Journey, 177; Holmberg, Dear Brother, 198n4. Lisa’s key biographers both raise interesting points about the formation of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, with Walter B. Douglas saying, “the scheme was a cumbersome one, and it is surprising that Lisa should have agreed to it” (Lisa, 258), and Richard Edward Oglesby adding that the articles of agreement “concretely delineated the aura of distrust [that] hung about this heterogeneous collection of merchants” and that “the lengths to which these men went to insure each other’s honesty not only were absurd but were partly the cause of the company’s failure to take full advantage of its prospects.” (Manuel Lisa, 70.)
12. Agreement for Return of the Mandan Chief [24 February 1809], Jackson, Letters, 2:446–50. As for contemporaneous objections to the agreement, on April 27, 1809, Rodolphe Tillier, former factor at Belle Fontaine, wrote President James Madison and asked, “Is it proper for the public service that the U. S. officers as a Governor or a Super Intendant of Indian Affairs & U. S. Factor at St. Louis should undertake any share in Mercantile and private concerns?” (National Archives, Record Group 107, T-1809, unregistered series, cited in Jackson, Letters, 2:457–58n.)
13. The license that Governor Lewis issued to Lisa on June 7, 1809, allowed him to “trade with the several nations and tribes of Indians residing on the Missouri and its branches, above the entrance of the River Platte, with the exception of the Aricaree [Arikara] nation” (License, June 7, 1809, Lisa Papers, Missouri History Museum).
14. Irving, Astoria, 135.
15. Agreement for the Return of the Mandan Chief, Jackson, Letters, 2:448; Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 76; Agreement for Return of the Mandan Chief, 448; Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 75.
16. Background from the 1962 J. B. Lippincott Company version of Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, a faithful, unabridged printing of the 1846 edition, with an introduction by A. P. Nasatir. As Nasatir writes, “James’s book, though written some twenty-five years after the events it narrates, and distorted by its author’s highly critical views, is . . . one of the most fascinating first-hand records of early experiences on the Far Western frontier, and invaluable for its information regarding episodes and persons either ignored or slighted by other authors” (p. xi).
17. James, Three Years, 44–45.
18. Mattes, “John Dougherty,” 113, 118n12.
19. James, Three Years, 5, 4.
20. Pierre Menard to Adrien Langlois, June 23, 1809, cited in Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 77; Manuel Lisa to William Clark, July 2, 1809, Missouri History Museum.
21. Manuel Lisa to William Clark, July 10, 1809, Missouri History Museum. Clark was indeed making every effort to have deserters arrested, and on July 22, with Lisa’s letter in hand, he wrote to his brother Jonathan: “The Missouri Fur Company has met with Several disertions, I have now Six men in joil [jail] who deserted from the Company 250 miles from this [place]” (William Clark to Jonathan Clark, July 22, 1809, Holmberg, Dear Brother, 204).
22. Lisa to Clark, July 10, 1809, Missouri History Museum.
23. Lavender, Fist in the Wilderness, 115.
24. Chittenden, American Fur Trade, 1:381.
25. James, Three Years, 5, 6.
26. Ibid., 6. Oglesby blames James and his crew for these difficulties, claiming they failed to realize how important it was to get up the river as fast as possible, that “they refused to ration themselves to make the supplies stretch out a month as Lisa had calculated they should, and when they did run out of pork, they were not enterprising enough to send one of their number to hunt up some fresh meat” (Manuel Lisa, 82).
27. James, Three Years, 8.
28. Jackson, “Journey to the Mandans,” 185.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 186.
31. Ibid.
32. Meriwether Lewis to Pierre Chouteau, June 8, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:455; Agreement for Return of the Mandan Chief, Jackson, Letters, 2:447.
33. Irving, Astoria, 141–42.
34. Meriwether Lewis to Pierre Chouteau, 2:454; James, Three Years, 11; Pierre Chouteau to William Eustis, December 14, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:482.
35. Jackson, “Journey to the Mandans,” 189; Chouteau to Eustis, December 14, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:482; Agreement for Return of the Mandan Chief, Jackson, Letters, 2:447.
36. James, Three Years, 11; Holmes, “Five Scalps,” 24–25.
37. Holmes, “Five Scalps,” 23, 25.
38. Ibid., 254–26. Neither Richard Edward Oglesby nor Walter B. Douglas, Lisa’s key biographers, mentions Rose joining the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company in 1809, perhaps because none of the firsthand participants left any record of it and also because Holmes does not tell when it happened. Indeed, most of Holmes’s fascinating narrative, which gives every appearance of being liberally embellished, offers no dates to help readers get oriented. Nevertheless, such historians as David Lavender (Fist in the Wilderness, 162), Gordon Speck (Breeds, 209), and Willis Blenkinsop (“Edward Rose,” 338) maintain that Rose worked for the company during the 1809–1810 period and was particularly associated with Andrew Henry. And while James does not identify the rider as Rose, his description of the horseman charging out at full speed to meet the Americans is surprisingly similar to Holmes’s more complete account. Nor could Holmes have been influenced by James’s writing because the former published his article almost twenty years before James did.
39. Jackson, “Journey to the Mandans,” 190–91; Chouteau to Eustis, December 14, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:482–83; Agreement for Return of the Mandan Chief, Jackson, Letters, 2:448.
40. Chouteau to Eustis December 14, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:483; Majors, “John McClellan in the Rockies,” 611. See also Morris, “Charles Courtin,” 31–33.
41. Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 85.
42. Jackson, “Journey to the Mandans,” 191-92.
43. James, Three Years, 14.
44. Irving, Astoria, 142.
45. Pierre Menard to Adrien Langlois, October 7, 1809, cited in Oglesby, Manuel Lisa, 91, and Aarstad, “This Unfortunate Affair,” 113.
46. White and Gowans, “The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade,” 62.
47. William Clark to Toussaint Charbonneau, August 20, 1806, Jackson, Letters, 1:315. After discovering a baptismal record for Baptiste dated December 28, 1809, at St. Louis, Bob Moore theorized quite convincingly that “as [Chouteau’s] expedition prepared to return downriver, it seems likely that the Charbonneaus would have sensed that the time was right to go to St. Louis. If they took passage on the return trip with Chouteau’s large, well-armed corps of soldiers and trappers (he had at least 125 men), their safety would be better assured than if they attempted to make the trip alone or with a smaller party” (“Pompey’s Baptism,” 13).
48. Chouteau to Eustis, December 14, 1809, Jackson, Letters, 2:483.
49. Major Thomas Biddle, Camp Missouri, Missouri River, to Colonel Henry Atkinson, October 29, 1819, American State Papers, 202.
50. Chittenden, American Fur Trade, 1:161.
51. Ibid., 1:162.
52. Ibid., 2:925; Charles Gratiot to John Jacob Astor, June 10, 1810, Gratiot Collection, Missouri History Museum.
53. Pierre Chouteau to William Simmon, November 23, 1809, Pierre Chouteau Letterbook, Missouri History Museum.
54. Missouri Gazette, November 2, 1809. In the two centuries since Meriwether Lewis’s death, controversy has raged over whether he was murdered—and, if so, whether nameless thieves, Lewis’s servant, the (supposedly) absent owner of the inn, James Neelly (Lewis’s traveling companion), an agent of General James Wilkinson (fearful Lewis was about to expose his grand conspiracy), or someone else was responsible—or whether he died by his own hand—and, if so, whether the root cause was hopelessness, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, syphilis, malaria, or something else. Controversy has also raged over whether exhuming the body would help solve the mystery, as well as whether the National Park Service should grant permission for an exhumation. (Lewis’s grave lies within the boundaries of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a National Park Service unit.) In April of 2010, after some waffling, the Department of the Interior stated that permission would not be granted and that the decision was final. (See Mike Esterl, “Meriwether Lewis’s Final Journey Remains a Mystery,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2010.) For more on the compelling debate surrounding Lewis’s sad death, see the following: Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), 2009, especially pp. 297–325; Vardis Fisher, Suicide or Murder: The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press), 1962; John D. W. Guice, ed., By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 2006; and James Starrs and Kira Gale, The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation (Omaha, Nebr.: River Junction Press), 2009.