The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West

by Robert J. Willoughby

  CHAPTER 3

  Working the Missouri

  By 1819 the oldest brother, Joseph Robidoux, was no longer a young, freewheeling fur trader who traveled extensively throughout the Mississippi–Missouri river valleys. He had reached middle age, but still enjoyed the frontier life, while keeping a family, consisting of his wife and eventually eight children, comfortably ensconced in St. Louis. By all accounts he had a friendly, engaging personality, hospitable and generous to family and stranger alike, and remained still just as ambitious as in his youth. On the subject of business no one could be more hard nosed, and his pen and tongue could be caustic, while his overly confident personality, frankly, irritated others. Shrewd and self-serving, by all accounts of his contemporaries, he openly reflected his ambition to be successful at what he did. His younger brothers, down to twenty-year-old Michel, all worked for or with him to some extent, coming and going from Joseph's post near the mouth of the Platte, routinely commuting down to St. Louis and back.

  The end of 1819 witnessed the revival of the fur trade on the Missouri and gave all indications of becoming a wide-open market. The United States Government's factory system neared extinction, thanks to the efforts of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, a power westerner in Congress and an unabashed disciple of the Chouteaus and their business. His legislative support led to the factory system officially going out of business in 1822. Another important move by the government to help the western fur traders involved the appointment of William Clark, the great explorer and former territorial governor of Missouri, as superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis. He held the post from 1822 to 1838, and as a friend of the Chouteaus, with a complete understanding of the needs of traders, he exercised generous leeway in the granting of licenses and passports for Indian trade from St. Louis all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The big British firms, the North West Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the north from Oregon to the Great Lakes, and sent agents to encroach down the Missouri even into Sioux territory. Manual Lisa again revived and reconstituted his Missouri Fur Company, recruiting new, younger partners: Andrew Drips, Charles Bent, Joshua Pilcher, and Lucien Fontenelle. Lisa continued to work the Council Bluffs area, but his daring and imagination took the company high up the Missouri, beyond the Mandans toward the Yellowstone country, to reestablish the bases abandoned nearly a decade before.1

  Manuel Lisa's Missouri Fur Company initially may have employed one of the Robidoux brothers for a time. Manuel Lisa identified one of them as an agent in a letter to his wife, Mary, dated May 25, 1819, written at Fort Lisa, asking her to tell them “to remain.” Remain where is not identified, and may better be translated as to not do any business until he returned. The same letter contains references to a number of other giants of the Missouri trade, Bernard Pratte, Michael Immel, and Bartholomew Berthhold. Considering the date of the letter, it well may have been at the time of his aborted expedition just prior to breaking with Berthold & Chouteau.2

  It did not take long for Lisa's competition to get organized and enter the picture, either. The outfit of Bernard Pratte and Louis Vasquez also pushed up the Missouri above Council Bluffs. In the years after the War of 1812, Joseph and Francois competed with an old nemesis, and brother-in-law of the Chouteaus, Jean Pierre Cabanné (1773–1841), near the Platte confluence, who operated his own company until 1819. Joseph and Francois operated a trading post with Alexander Papin in 1819, located on the Missouri near the site called Nashanotolona. According to the license documents they were in partnership with “Chouteau and Butholl” (Berthold, Chouteau & Company) of St. Louis, and licensed to trade with the “Ottoes, Ioways, Missourias, Pawnees, Mahas, Piankeshaws, and Sioux.” Their combined capital of $12,000 represented a truly sizable investment for that time. Berthold, Chouteau & Company, also called the French Company, took a cautious position, remaining on the lower Missouri, rarely operating farther north than Council Bluffs. Robidoux developed a good personal relationship with the Otoe Nation, who occupied the land south of the Platte and along the Missouri River. He also traded with the Omaha Nation (Mahas) in the area around the Bluffs.3

  In faraway New York City, John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company had begun serious consideration of reentering the fray after the close of the War of 1812. The Chouteaus and a small number of St. Louis moneymen either controlled outright or invested in a number of regional companies or outfits like the one Robidoux partnered with. Astor intended to challenge the powerful St. Louis consortiums with their trade interests all along the Missouri River, but maybe did not realize that beyond the control of their companies were hundreds of independents who trapped and skinned the animals, bypassing the Indians, and freelance traders who owned no allegiance to anybody and didn't bother with getting a government license. Though technically in partnership with, or employed by the French Company, the Brothers Robidoux made their greatest mark freelancing.4

  Joseph Robidoux wrote his business correspondence with an eloquent hand in French and conducted many of his financial transactions valued in piastres, the French name for a unit of money about equal to the American dollar. Those engagés under him were universally young Frenchmen or métis from the St. Louis community. The coming and going of the Brothers Robidoux up and down the Missouri between Council Bluffs and St. Louis appeared regular. Joseph and twenty-five-year-old Antoine stopped in Franklin on the Missouri River in March 1819 and conducted some small business with one James Barnes, who signed a note, redeemable in five days, for $5.75 to both of them.5 The town of Franklin, organized and platted in 1816, to which Antoine had moved, developed into the key western outpost on the lower Missouri and appeared poised to become the jumping-off point for the Santa Fe trade when it opened. It must have been flush with rumors of the impending success of the Mexican Revolution against longtime colonial power, Spain, and the potential to be first in when the revolution did in fact succeed.6 Antoine's range of travel appears to have been substantial. Indicative, he spent less and less time in the familiar haunts of St. Louis, for we see Antoine's name appearing on a printed list over several weeks of those who had letters held at the main post office in St. Louis.7

  The expansion of the American fur trade after the War of 1812, propelled by men like Lisa and the business of the Brothers Robidoux and their contemporaries, well past the lower Missouri and the mostly passive tribes there, had raised questions within the United States Government. The government factory system had such obvious limitations, due to the location of its fixed sites, and the ongoing practice of licensing individuals or companies to trade directly with the various tribes remained marked with ongoing doubts, controversy, and corruption. Foreign traders continued to encroach and there appeared no immediate response the U.S. Government could offer. John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, writing in a report to the House of Representatives in December 1818, summed up the situation.

  In order to have just idea on this subject, it is necessary to take into consideration not only the vast extent and remoteness of the region over which it is proposed to extend our trade, but the character of the numerous tribes who inhabit it. They are all more or less migratory; in the summer moving toward the north, and in the winter to the south, in pursuit of the buffalo and other game. They are thus, in the summer, brought into the neighborhood of the British establishments to the north of our limits, where, notwithstanding our military posts and the advantage of our position, much of the trade and influence over these fierce and warlike tribes will centre, unless our means of carrying it on should be as well organized and as efficient as theirs. The difficulty, though of an opposite kind, is no less considerable on the southern frontier of this portion of our country. The line between us and the Spanish possessions in Mexico is, in its whole extent, a subject of discussion; and, even should it be adjusted, will probably, to a considerable extent, be without natural and visible boundaries. To a trade thus situated, extending over so vast a region, inhabited by numerous tribes not less warlike, than save, with the com
petition of powerful and long established companies on one side, and danger of collision on the other, the unorganized efforts of individuals always with jarring, and frequently with opposing interests, appear to be wholly inadequate to its successful or safe prosecution. The rivalry of trade, which, in well-regulated communities, gives the greatest prosperity to commerce, would, in these distant regions, beyond the control of law or superior authority, amongst fierce and ignorant savages, lead to the most fatal consequences. Each trader, or association of traders, would endeavor to monopolize the trade within certain limits, and would exert their cunning and influence to render the savages their partisans, and the enemy of their rivals in trade. Among a people at once so fierce and so easily duped, the result may be readily anticipated. A state of disorder and violence would universally prevail, equally unfortunate to the Indians and ourselves, and which would strongly tend to turn the trade, and with it the influence over the Indians, to the well organized foreign fur companies near our limits.8

  On one of the points made by Calhoun, the cutthroat competition among the American traders, there is some anecdotal support for it, involving Joseph and Manuel Lisa. Both men certainly held licenses, and operated trading posts on the Missouri in the vicinity of the Panis, or Pawnee. The story told to the Swiss artist Rudolph Friederich Kurz, who personally knew Robidoux some years after the event, would be amazing, if it actually happened as recounted.

  Decatur [apparently a traveling companion] told me a good joke that old Robidoux played, many years ago, on a competitor of his in these parts named Manuel Lisa. Both were traders with the Pawnee. Each of them tried to acquire by trade as many pelts as possible for himself without being at all squeamish as to the means he employed, and, for that reason, they often quarreled. In order to prevent such wrangles and under the conviction that neither had the power to ruin the other, they pledged reciprocally to be “loyal,” i.e. if a band of Indians arrived at their trading posts for the purpose of exchange and barter, neither would attempt to take advantage of the other. Manuel Lisa, however, had no intention of trading on honorable terms for any length of time; accordingly, upon an occasion when both of them expected a band of Pawnee he tried to circumvent Robidoux. While he ordered his post supplied in secret with commodities to barter to the Pawnee, he went over to see Robidoux by way of putting him off his guard, by his own presence there to hinder preparations, and to see what was really going on in the other storehouse. Robidoux played his role; acted just as though he had allowed himself to be really duped. He invited Lisa to drink a glass of champagne to the success of prospective trade; but regretted that on account of his gout he was not able to stoop down, and therefore would have to ask Lisa to fetch the flask from the cellar himself. The latter obligingly raided the trapdoor in the room and went down the steps. Joe let fall the door, rolled a cask upon it, and with mocking words left his opponent imprisoned, in order that he might trade alone with the Pawnee.9

  In 1819, Robidoux and the other traders at Fort Lisa and the vicinity of the Platte got some new neighbors, the United States Army. As early as 1817, the Secretary of War John C. Calhoun had planned to send a large military contingent up the Missouri, to protect the fur traders, show the flag, and keep British influence to a minimum. He intended to eventually establish a base in Mandan territory. During the winter of 1818–1819, the advance force under Colonel Talbot Chambers made preparations at Cow Island, a few miles above the future site of Fort Leavenworth. Plans called for the use of steamboats to take the main army unit, commanded by Colonel Henry Atkinson, north. The steamboats had numerous mechanical failures and the entire expedition transferred to keelboats. They reached the Council Bluffs area in late September and hurried to establish winter quarters. The first location, called Cantonment Missouri, was five miles north of Fort Lisa, on the west side of the Missouri River, sixteen miles above present-day Omaha. Eventually 1,120 troops arrived. Due to a poor original site, officers moved the fort to higher ground in 1820. On October 1, 1821, Colonel Henry Leavenworth took command of the Sixth Regiment, after Atkinson was promoted to general and given a command office in the Western Department. The army renamed the fort in honor of the departing general, Fort Atkinson.10

  The somewhat tenuous position of the traders there grew more secure with the presence of so many soldiers, marching, firing their weapons, and holding councils with local tribal leaders. Steamboat traffic increased, though still rare, and men working the trade farther up the Missouri found a safe haven for their furs and persons, still far from St. Louis. An Indian agent took up permanent residency at the fort, one Benjamin O'Fallon, nephew of William Clark, along with a post sutler. The sutler provided the soldiers stationed there with many of the little luxuries of life, in an otherwise mundane world. Popular items included food items, drinks like whiskey, tobacco, and personal items like a comb. The sutlers were appointed by the secretary of war and strictly regulated by military law. Prices, weights and measures, soldiers' accounts, and inventories were directed by a Council of Administration, made up of officers at the post. Sutlers had a monopoly on the posts and paid a small amount per soldier into a post fund for the privilege of trading there. Traders from off the post, like the Missouri Fur Company men, had contact with the soldiers, but could not bring their wares into the fort. The civilian traders made frequent visits, doing business with or through the sutler and the officers at Fort Atkinson.11

  In March 1819, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wrote to Governor William Clark about ongoing problems with Indian traders who used liquor to gain position with certain tribes. “The introduction of spirituous liquor among the Indian tribes is not only contrary to law but productive of much mischief, and which while it thwarts the beneficent policy of the government with regard to the Indian nations and entails misery upon them, endangers the peace and safety of our citizens, it therefore becomes a duty to stop this increasing evil and you are requested to take the most prompt and efficient steps to prevent their introduction among the several tribes of Indians within the Missouri Territory, either by the licensed or by other traders, and to enforce the law on this point strictly against all offenders.” Alcohol consumption in the culture of the French Creole traders, engagés, and voyageurs was frequently described as “excessive” and most saw no problem with distributing spirits to Indians to give themselves an edge in acquiring the all-important furs from which they made their living.12

  Major Thomas Biddle, writing from then Camp Missouri in late October 1819 offered a grave appraisal of the men, like Robidoux, operating the Indian trade there. “It is evident, in a pecuniary point of view, that various individuals having opposite interests trade with the same Indians. These traders are continually endeavoring to lessen each other in the eyes of the Indians, not only by abusive words, but by all sorts of low tricks and maneuvers. If a trader trust an Indian, his opponent uses all his endeavors to purchase the furs he may take, or prevent in any way his being paid. Each trader supports his favorite chief, which produces not only intestine commotions and divisions in the tribe, but destroys the influence of the principal chief, who should always be under the control of the government. The introduction of ardent spirits is one of the unhappy consequences of this opposition among traders. So violent is the attachment of Indians for it, that he who gives most is sure to obtain furs; while, should any one attempt to trade without it, he is sure of losing ground with his antagonists; no bargain is ever concluded without it, and the law on that subject is evaded by their saying they give, not sell it.”13

  Considering Joseph Robidoux's prominence as a trader in the vicinity, and the anecdotal stories about his own capacity for cutthroat competition and copious liquor consumption, as evidenced by his previously noted encounters with Lisa, it would be very difficult to believe he did not actively participate in the distribution of spirits to the Otoes, Missouri, Ioway, and Omaha Indians who became, as another witness named Edwin James stated, were “much addicted to alcohol.” Not only were the Indians pli
ed with liquor to give the traders an advantage, but so too were employees, Creoles and métis alike, who became indebted for the amount of spirits they consumed and were frequently reduced to a type of “peonage,” because they could never work enough to pay off their liquor tab.14

  Trade goods going up the Missouri to Robidoux's post, legal or contraband, like liquor, and furs going down the river traveled in a variety of conveyances. By the 1820s, steamboats plied the waters of the Missouri, but in very limited numbers due to a variety of mechanical problems that still plagued the new power source, and navigation of the river channels, frequently mined with sandbars and sunken logs or snags. The fastest way to go was in a dugout canoe or pirogue. Small boats with a sail and a set or two of oars, called a skiff, also made good time. Until 1840, much of the river trade was handled with the keelboat, which could be poled, rowed, sailed, or cordelled—towed with ropes along the riverbank, up stream. Mackinaw barges also carried bulk cargoes, usually downstream, but also up the Missouri if the merchandise warranted. Generally speaking barges were very slow, lucky to make eight to ten miles per day.