by Don Berry
The doctor‘s wife and another were present at the vaccination, and Wyeth records with amusement:
. . . they were really beautiful women but the eyes of the two [Indian boys] were riveted on the White Squaws Baptiste who speaks a little English told the other Boys when he returned to the boat that he had seen a white squaw white as snow and so pretty.
Sometime during the polite wining and dining, Wyeth happened to mention that Kenneth McKenzie had a very nice little distillery going up at Fort Union, very nice. Which doubtless caused a spasm of choking and coughing at table.
***
It is frequently written that Wyeth informed on McKenzie as a gesture of revenge, and a commercial blow. Chittenden, the great historian of the trade, seems to be the originator of this notion. He says Wyeth was angry at being refused the purchase of liquor, and at the prices McKenzie charged; that he settled up "without a murmur and bided [his] time for
revenge."
I don’t think this was the case, for several reasons. Wyeth’s journal references to McKenzie are all highly favorable:
. . . all possible hospitality and politeness . . . we took leave [of] our hospitable entertainers and on the experience of a few days with prepossessions highly in their favor we found Mr. McKensie a most polite host.
Certainly not the words of a revenge-bent man. Wyeth also seemed to be poorly informed (Wyeth poorly informed!) on the actual precarious state of the liquor situation. Of the distillery itself he says that "here they are beginning to distil spirits from corn traded from the Inds. below. This owing to some’ restriction on the introduction of the article into the country."
I doubt that a man familiar with the government’s new, hard policy would refer to it as merely "some restriction? I think it much more likely that, since the act of absolute prohibition had been passed while he was in the mountains, Wyeth simply didn’t yet know of it. He certainly thought nothing of his own "introduction of the article into the country"; it was part of the usual run of the business he was learning. It seems most probable that Wyeth was unaware of the potential ruckus he was stirring up.
It’s a minor point in any event, since the authorities would soon have learned of McKenzie’s project from Bill Sublette. But since it has reflected some discredit on Wyeth for a hundred years, I wanted to clear it up.
So Wyeth proceeded on to Boston, where we will pick him up again shortly. He left behind him a stew and ferment that nearly wrecked American Fur, and did wreck McKenzie personally. In order to follow this we will have to skip a little ahead of our narrative.
When Wyeth left, the Indian agent wrote General Clark in St. Louis, giving the information. Clark forwarded this to Pierre Chouteau, Jr., head of American’s Western Department. If Mr. Chouteau thought it proper to explain the matter, General Clark would be very happy to hear it. Chouteau replied late in November. As Chittenden (whose account of this affair I follow here) very properly observes, Chouteau’s answer "for ingenuity, surpassed even the distillery scheme itself."
The Company, of course, knew nothing whatever about all this. Further, they most emphatically disclaimed any and all responsibility for unauthorized acts by their personnel (an attitude reminiscent of the Crow chief’s position after the robbery of Fitzpatrick). Chouteau did go so far as to admit:
The company, believing that wild pears and berries might be converted into wine (which they did not understand to be prohibited), did authorize experiments to be made, and if, under color of this, ardent spirits have been distilled and vended, it is without the knowledge, authority, or direction of the company, and I will take measures .. . to arrest the operation complained of, if found to exist.
He forthwith sent an express to McKenzie, complaining that the King had "placed the company in an unpleasant situation." This, of course, annoyed McKenzie considerably, since what he had done had been with the full knowledge of Chouteau and the Company officials. He was a Company man through and through and, if it would help, he was willing to be made the scapegoat (which he was); but he resented the rather high tone Chouteau was taking. (It appears that Chouteaui had been so far involved in this as to get a legal opinion on the project in St. Louis; and it was, wildly enough, favorable.) Let’s have it understood, said McKenzie, that he was acting for the benefit of the Company, and with their knowledge.
But however annoyed he may have been with Chouteau, McKenzie was still the Company on the upper Missouri, and he presently presented his own explanation. In this he was not less ingenious than Chouteau himself. It seems he was sort of trying the still out for a friend.
This (imaginary) friend of McKenzie’s lived over the border, at the Red River settlement of HBC. In a friendly enough spirit, McKenzie had agreed to purchase a distillery in the United States, take it to Fort Union and store it until the friend came to pick it up.
Purely by coincidence, a mechanically inclined American happened to show up at Fort Union about this time, and took an immediate fancy to the marvelous contraption, just sitting there idle. He wanted to try it out on the fruits of the country; fool around a little, make a bit of wine perhaps. McKenzie saw no harm in this, and granted permission. But, as should be obvious, this had nothing at all to do with the Company’s affairs; just a passing incident to enliven the slow-moving days on the frontier.
Washington was not happy about these explanations. The Company fell into bad odor, and came very near losing its license to trade. American Fur had, very naturally, a great number of enemies who were happy enough to count coup on this sort of thing. The opposition was hot and heavy for a while, in spite of Senator Benton’s efforts on behalf of the Company.
The resolution that came about at last seems to have been due to the personal efforts of Pierre Chouteau in Washington. Two letters indicate what happened. The first, from the St. Louis house to McKenzie in the spring of ‘34:
In asking you to stop at once its operation, we now urgently renew the request, and however painful it may be to destroy an establishment which promised such excellent results, it is nevertheless of the most urgent necessity to submit. Otherwise we shall expose ourselves to the greatest embarrassments. It was only by the assurance of our Mr. Chouteau to the Secretary of War that we would conform to the government regulations pertaining to the Indian trade that the affair has not been followed up. Under these circumstances we think it will be prudent to send the still down or to dispose of it otherwise so that it may give offense to no one.
The second was from Ramsey Crooks, superior of both McKenzie and Chouteau, to the latter:
The General tells me that you had the address to persuade Judge H—that your distillery at the Yellowstone was only intended to promote the cause of botany. But prenez-y-garde. Don’t presume too much on your recent escape .... The less of this sort of business you do the better, for the time may, and very probably will, come when you will be exposed by the endless number of spies you have around you.
McKenzie was brought down from Fort Unions shortly after the conclusion of this affair and sent to Europe for a year. He returned for a short time, but never again assumed his control of Company destinies on the upper river. (When he finally left the Company he went into the wholesale liquor business.)
***
One other circumstance adds to the confusion this winter of '33-'34; American Fur was in the process of changing its corporate structure; as a man may be said to change his personality by being beheaded. It will be remembered that John Jacob Astor had noted the presence of silk hats in Europe, and Astor was not a man slow to take a hint.
He had not been personally engaged in the trade for some time. Ramsay Crooks of the Northern Department was the effective head of the Company, while Chouteau in St. Louis and McKenzie at Fort Union operated on the western frontier. In spite of this, Astor was always the abiding force—referred to by Crooks as notre estimable grand-papa. When McKenzie had medals struck to impress the Indians, it was Astor’s profile on them, looking Every Roman, very well fed.
/> But Astor was at the point of retirement. He was seventy years old in the summer of '33; and there were silk hats on the Continent; and it was just about time to get out. While much of the Astor fortune had been accumulated by shrewd investment—depreciated government bonds, and, above all, New York real estate—the fur trade was his first success, the rock on which all that came later was founded: "the business," wrote Crooks, "seems to him like an only child and he can not muster courage to part with it."
But Astor’s judgment did not fail him, nor did his courage, and in June of 1833 he wrote from Geneva:
Wishing to retire from the concern in which I am engaged with your house, you will please to take this as notice thereof, and that the engagement entered into . . . between your house and me, on the part of the American Fur Company, will expire with the outfit of the present year.
The Titan of the fur trade was leaving, and it was one more reason for Chouteau and McKenzie to be nervous in the early spring of '34; stepping into John Jacob Astor’s boots was going to take some doing.
CHAPTER 23
"Obliged to pay well for a cessation of hostilities"
THE years 1833 was known in the Sioux calendar as Wicarpi okicamna: When the Stars Were Falling. RMF’s star had begun its fall, but the signs were not yet clear. Tom Fitzpatrick on the Powder had his troubles—robbery by the Crows—but that was routine; hazards of the trade. The other partners were off about the mountains this fall, trapping beaver, fighting Indians, and telling each other lies about Rendezvous 1833. For them, there was nothing to indicate the sudden, incandescent rush to destruction that would burn out the company as surely—and almost as quickly—as a meteorite is burned out in its passage through atmosphere.
Massive forces were at work this fall, shaping the end of RMF. Ironically enough, they would probably have welcomed the news, because it seemed to be just a little trouble for their old friends, the Company . . .
***
The preceding chapter took us a little ahead of our narrative. McKenzie’s disgrace and Astor’s withdrawal were still in the future. The problems facing the King of the Missouri this fall also seemed routine—the challenge of another company, the burgeoning competition of the upstart Sublette & Campbell firm.
By September their posts up and down the river were established and Fort William was well under way, under the direction of Bob Campbell. By the middle of the month Bill Sublette was sufficiently recovered from his illness to leave for St. Louis in company with his brother Milton. Campbell settled down at the spanking-new Fort William to divert the Company trade td himself.
A few miles upriver, at Fort Union, McKenzie was worrying over this new threat, and for the almost inevitable reason: liquor. Somehow or other Bill Sublette had managed to squeeze past the government inspection. McKenzie thought they had around a hundred kegs of alcohol; the flat-curved panniers usually lashed to the sides of mules.
"It is hard," McKenzie wrote, "that new hands and limited means should have such advantages over us . .. ." and in a different letter "at the lower post they have an abundance of alcohol and we are destitute, and you know how fond some Indians are of strong water."
The new competition was the sole subject of conversation among the engagés at Fort Union, and this, of course, also held true for the Indians. Virtually all the Assiniboine chiefs and some of the Crees from across the border made visits of inspection and curiosity to the new fort.
It was all very exciting during the fall, and things at first looked promising for Sublette & Campbell. They stole away three Company men for interpreters, paying them $500 a year; good wages for a post-based interpreter.
But McKenzie was not one to grumble without action. He immediately lashed out against Sublette & Campbell with the single weapon he possessed over them—cash. If they had the liquor, McKenzie had the money. By January, 1834, McKenzie could look back on the fall of '33 with more than a little satisfaction. He had, in four months, met and demolished the opposition. He outlined the conflict with Sublette & Campbell in a letter to his partisan at Fort McKenzie (this letter is quoted at length in Chittenden, and here reprinted from that source):
They had, moreover, a full complement of clerks and seemed prepared to carry all before them, nothing doubting but that they would secure at least one half the trade of the country. They abandoned the idea of sending to the Blackfeet this season. They started a small equipment on horses to the Crow village on Wind river. They were expected to return early in December but have not yet been heard of Mr. Winter and J. Beckwith passed the fall in the Crow camps and traded all their beaver. While Mr. Winter was with the Crows Mr. Fitzpatrick of the R.M. F. Co. (my friend Captain Stewart was with him) arrived with thirty men, one hundred horses and mules, merchandise, etc., etc., and encamped near the village. Hes had not been long there before a large party paid him a visit and pillaged everything he had, taking even the watch from his pocket and the capote from his back; also driving off all his horses. This has been a severe blow to Sublette and Campbell. [Meaning that RMF’s hunt was probably already committed to Fort William, rather than being taken to St. Louis.] And although on their first start here they made great show and grand promise to the Indians and although among the men nothing was talked about but the new company, they live now at the sign of "The case is altered." Their interpreters have quarreled and left them, and are now working hard for me. The Indians find their promises mere empty words and are applying continually to me to engage them. They have a post near to Riviere au Tremble in opposition to Chardon where they are doing literally nothing. Chardon has it all his own way. They have another post on the Yellowstone in opposition to Pillot and Brazeau and there they get no robes although they offer a blanket of scarlet for a robe.
You must be aware that I have not been asleep this fall. It has cost me something to secure the Indians to me, but being determined to get the peltries, nothing has been neglected that would carry my point. My opponents can not by any means get peltries sufficient to pay the wages of their men. At the Gros Ventres and Mandans they have not even robes to sleep on. At the Mandans my last account states that Picotte has eighty packs of robes and eight beaver, and I hope things are equally promising lower down. [They were. Larpenteur wrote from Fort William: "This post was not the only one that was out of luck for all those. along the Missouri proved a failure.] On my return from Fort Pierre, Mr. Campbell called on me. W. Sublette had previously gone down stream on his way to St. Louis and proposed to sell out to me all their interest on the river. I listened to his terms but was by no means disposed to buy out an opposition, when all my old experienced and faithful clerks and tradesmen felt so certain of driving them out; especially on my giving them carte blanche with respect to trade at their respective posts, of course to be used with discretion but with this condition, that all peltries must be secured for the A. F. Co. and thus far I have no reason to complain. The new company is now in bad odor and must sink.
"Carte b1anche," says McKenzie, and he was not exaggerating. Fitzpatrick’s robbery was part of it, and so was the appalling price of $12 for beaver recorded at the Mandans. This about four times what the pelts would bring in St. Louis. The Company was taking a fantastic loss on furs this season; but they were getting them. It would seem indeed that Sublette & Campbell were out of the running; so badly whipped that McKenzie wouldn’t even deign to consider buying them out.
But the above letter of triumph was written on January 21, 1834. Bill Sublette was already en route to New York.
***
In view of the disastrous failure of Sublette & Campbell’s operation, Bill Sublette’s achievement in New York this winter is all the more remarkable. In about a week of conferences he managed to undo everything McKenzie had accomplished in the field in four months.
In a series of secret negotiations with American Fur Company officials, Sublette pushed through an agreement which was tantamount to a capitulation by the Company. The terms of the agreement finally reached were st
ated in the letter informing McKenzie:
By the enclosed agreement you will see that we have concluded an arrangement at New York with Mr. Sublette. We take such of his equipment in merchandise, utensils etc., as remains at the close of the season’s trade and we retire from the mountain trade for the ensuing year.
In return for this Sublette was to abandon the posts on the Missouri; not to compete with the Company any longer in their own stronghold.
Bob Campbell’s brother Hugh entertained Sublette for some time after his return from New York. His description of the atfair to his brother expresses. some of Hugh's admiration for the accomplishment:
As you are deeply interested in the agreement made with the A.F. Co. I may as well give my opinion of that matter. In no instance have I ever known a settlement conducted with more ability—nor has our friend Mr. Sublette ever shown himself to more advantage than in bringing those men to the terms agreed on. It is impossible for me to comprehend the bearings of every question involved—but with regard to the importance of setting at rest all competition (unprofitable to both parties) and receiving payment for useless trumpery I think the compromise is excellent. The article itself looks much. like a treaty of peace betwixt soverign potentates—perhaps I might add a little resembling the partition of Poland too—but after all there is something in it which has gratified my pride. That despotic Company have by this document acknowledged your equality (I might say superiority) and been obliged to pay well for a cessation of hostility, You quit your forts with all the honours & some of the spoils of war, to use a military phrase.
Upon the whole my dear Robert I am glad you have resigned the trade on the Missouri. . .. If you are still determined on pursuing the trade, other points offer greater inducements. I shall not however allude to them—because doing so .. . might be construed into my approval of your present mode of life—a thing that no success can ever reconcile me to under my circumstances.