The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West

by Robert J. Willoughby

  While the main operation of the Brothers Robidoux lay on the Missouri near the confluence of the Platte, the St. Louis retail partnership between Joseph and Francois appeared to break up. A notice in the Missouri Gazette dated June 20, 1820, read, “Notice. The Copartnership formerly existing under the firm of J & F Robidoux is this day dissolved by mutual consent. All persons having demands against said firm will settle with Francis [Francois] Robidoux and those indebted will make payment to him as he is daily authorized to settle up the business of the Firm.”15 Still, the 1821 directory of St. Louis listed Joseph and Francis Robidoux as merchants occupying 71 to 75 South Main N.E., the corner of North C, or Olive Street, which lay between Pine and Locust Streets. The exact nature of the source or timeframe of the published information is unknown but it is possible it was gathered prior to the June dissolution. That the closeout of the firm was entrusted to Francois indicates that Joseph spent most of his time at the post on the Missouri.

  No other Robidouxs were listed in the directory, a good indication that all the other brothers had at least given up permanent addresses in St. Louis by that date. While a number of the old French families remained, the growing number of Anglo-American migrants had clearly displaced many of those of French Creole extraction in the upper levels of economic and social standing and influence in the city. The lowest levels of the Creole population and those of métis ethnicity who once circulated freely in St. Louis society found themselves reduced to at best, second-class citizens, if not treated as complete outcasts.16 J. & F. Robideau (Joseph and Francois) appeared on a published role of delinquent taxes for 1822 in St. Louis County. Apparently they owned 400 acres and owed $32.43 taxes, liable to sale by Collector Joseph Brown if not paid by September 1, 1823.17 Another 200-acre tract appeared on St. Louis County delinquent tax rolls the next year under the name of Francois, somewhere on the Mississippi and owing $5.19.18

  Further indication that Francois remained in St. Louis, either handling family business or conducting his own business ventures, can be found in a public announcement in the St. Louis newspaper regarding a court petition to settle the disposition of a land title. Apparently Francois bought a tract of land, “bounded by the river Mississippi and Martigny's creek,” in the St. Louis County, “containing four arpents in front and forty arpents in depth,” from the heirs of a man named Toussaint Deschamps. The original purchase, forty years prior, had been consummated with “a certain quantity of corn and a certain number of hogs,” but never recorded with a proper title. Francois bought the land from a Joseph Menard, but with no clear title he had to petition the local justices of the peace to grant him relief. He produced two witnesses named Gamache and Hunot to testify on his behalf that the deal was on the up and up with their depositions to be taken in June 1821 in the office of Francios's attorney, Joseph Garnier, according to the announcement.19

  It was announced in February 1822 in the Missouri Gazette that Francois would stand for the office of justice of the peace. According to the announcement, Francois had at least one opponent, a man named Devius Guyer.20 But the financial situation of the Robidoux family in St. Louis remained in its usual state of flux. In March 1823, the Missouri Republican carried the announcement of a Marshal's Sale, to settle the award in the U.S. Missouri District Court brought by W. P. and P. M. Bryan against Francois and Joseph. The debt in question arose from a land sale in 1819, a quarter section near Franklin, in Cooper County in central Missouri. The mortgage had apparently gone unpaid and the foreclosure sale ordered. That Joseph and Francois would have bought land as a speculation near Franklin is of no surprise. Antoine most certainly lived in the area during 1819 and may have put his brothers onto the idea of buying the land, at the time in the public domain, for a potential quick profit that did not work out.21

  Due to the Panic of 1819, business operations across the nation suffered, including those involved in the fur trade. Recovery progressed slowly, and many in the Indian trade dropped out of the business or curtailed operations. Then, on August 12, 1820, Manuel Lisa died, and the Missouri Fur Company, having lost its director, took on new leaders, chief among them, Joshua Pilcher and Thomas Hempstead. The Missouri Fur Company faced financial and logistical difficulties through 1821, but did push up the Missouri again in 1822, going as far as the junction of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Rivers. Joshua Pilcher, who became the boss of the upper Missouri operations, used men such as Robert Jones and Michael Immel to push as far as the edge of Blackfeet country. When licensed by Benjamin O'Fallon on September 1, 1822, the firm reported assets of $50,000.22

  The French Company, which Joseph Robidoux had initially been a partner of, and subsequently became a bourgeois or post manager, underwent a name change to become Chouteau, Berthold & Pratte. They were licensed by William Clark to trade with the Sacs, Foxes, Ioways, Kansas, Pancas, and Otoes on the Missouri, starting August 21, 1822, for one year. The firm posted a $2,000 bond and reported capital of $4,413.21.23 Bernard Pratte Sr. had a long relationship with the Chouteau family in St. Louis and his son had the financial wherewithal to become the dominant partner, as well as a keen interest in the trade on the upper Missouri. Pratte used field partner Jean Pierre Cabanné, working from Council Bluffs, to manage the lower Missouri. Joseph Robidoux's position in the Council Bluffs area appeared to have been demoted to a chief field agent, working under Cabanné, a position he did not care for. His primary duty for the company involved running the post servicing the Otoe and Omaha tribes. It has been suggested that he got the position because Gabriel Chouteau did not want it. He held no independent license to trade with any tribe. In the role of company agent, he dealt directly with area tribes, particularly the Otoe, and supplied goods to the sutler at Fort Atkinson. The main problem for Robidoux stemmed from the deep and personal animosity between himself and Cabanné. Accusations made by Robidoux against Cabanné from ten years before still festered.24

  It is true that the passing of Lisa, and the reorganization of his company, ushered in a brief pause in the push up the Missouri into the Rocky Mountain region. His skill, and much luck and guile, in dealing with some of the more dangerous tribes, from the Arikara to the Blackfeet, would be missed. But after a few months, Pilcher's energy provided the impetus to go forward, coupled with the official demise of the government factory system, so that by the autumn of 1822 the St. Louis Enquirer enthusiastically reported in an article titled “The Fur Trade,” “that, those formerly engaged in it have increased their capital and extended their enterprise; firms have engaged in it, and others are preparing to do so. It is computed that a thousand men, chiefly from this place, are now employed at this trade on the waters of the Missouri and half that number on the Upper Mississippi. The Missouri Fur Company, which alone employs upward of 300 men, has reached the mountains, and will soon be on the Columbia River. Others have the same destination, so that the rich furs of that region will soon cease to be the exclusive property of the Hudson Bay Company.”25

  In pushing up the Missouri to the Yellowstone country, the Missouri Fur Company had aggressive competition. During the spring of 1822, General William H. Ashley, the sitting lieutenant governor, a former militia officer of the state of Missouri, and a noted speculator and businessman, joined forces with Rocky Mountain veteran Major Andrew Henry to form a fur trading company. In February and March 1822, they advertised in the St. Louis, Missouri, newspapers, offering one hundred “enterprising young men” one, two, or three years' employment as hunters and trappers. Ashley intended to trade with the Indians, but his business model would not depend on them. The young men would go out, set the traps, and bring in the pelts, whether the Indians cooperated or not. It represented a fundamental shift in the fur trade from that point on, even for men like the Robidouxs who had traded in furs taken almost exclusively from Indian suppliers. As Ashley introduced the new American procurement method for the mountains, anyone else hoping to go there and profit from the beaver would have to do the same. They may have recruited nearly twice
the number advertised for, before setting off for the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in April.26

  Major Henry led the first party, followed by Ashley, who faced a major delay when a keelboat full of supplies wrecked on the Missouri. Restarting from St. Louis in late June, Ashley reached the Arikara villages on the upper Missouri near the present border of North and South Dakota in September where they purchased horses from an apparently friendly, but for good reason, tribe with a contentious reputation. With Ashley's party traveled a man destined to become the epitome of the mountain man, Jedediah Strong Smith. Eventually Ashley joined Henry and they established a base at the mouth of the Yellowstone, then pushed west and south toward the Powder and Musselshell Rivers. The Missouri Fur Company under the leadership of Pilcher had also sent trappers to the same region, under the leadership of Robert Jones and Michael Immel. They were in fact very close to the base of Jones and Immel, farther down the Yellowstone. Ashley returned to St. Louis, with plans to recruit more men and resupply the Yellowstone base in the spring of 1823.27

  At the end of October 1822, the Missouri Intelligencer reported, “First arrival of Furs from the Rocky Mountains. Capt. Perkins, of the Missouri Fur Company, arrived in town this week, with a boat load of furs & peltries worth $14,000, from the Rocky Mountains. Another parcel belonging to the same company, worth $10,000, is on the river, and expected to arrive in the week coming. The whole has descended the Yellow Stone River & must have been transported 3000 miles to arrive at this place. In this first adventure [since revival of the fur trade] to the Rocky Mountains, it is gratifying to learn that no hostilities of any kind have occurred with the Indians, and that present appearances promise great success for the enterprising citizens who are now extending their trade to that remote region.”28 Joseph Robidoux, watching the rich cargo float by the Council Bluffs post, must have been envious.

  But the principals of the French Company had no immediate plans to join the beaver pelt bonanza of the Rocky Mountains. To Joseph, that left a door of opportunity to be pushed open when the time came. News began to trickle out from Mexico about the successful revolution to end Spanish rule there in 1820. By 1821, the fact had been established that Mexico had indeed won independence, and further, the harsh restrictions on American trade imposed by the Spanish in the New Mexico region, which had seen the arrest of earlier traders, went away. Land grants were being offered in Texas, to impresarios like Moses and Stephen Austin, and a trail for overland commerce with Missouri, anchored in Franklin on the Missouri River, waited to be opened. Before the year 1821 ended, William Becknell had successfully led the first party of Americans to Santa Fe, followed by John McKnight, Thomas James, Hugh Glenn, and Jacob Fowler, each ready to establish business in the provincial capital or Taos to the north.29

  The trail from Franklin passed through western Missouri just south of the town of Independence, crossed the eastern heart of today's Kansas, and fell in along the Arkansas River. Near the present southernmost border of Kansas and Colorado, the trail turned southwest, along the Cimarron cutoff, crossing the most dangerous Comanche lands. A secondary route that followed the Arkansas River farther into Colorado did not turn south until reaching the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the Sangre de Cristo range. The Cimarron cutoff led directly to Santa Fe, and the northern route provided better access to Taos. The channel of the Arkansas marked the somewhat arbitrary boundary between the United States and Mexico at that time. Though a treaty with Spain in 1819 had laid out a formal boundary between the southwest Louisiana Purchase and the provinces of Texas and New Mexico, unless one actually crossed the Red or Sabine River it would have been difficult to tell exactly where one entered Mexico. The stories of an abundant fur trade had already reached St. Louis, and entrepreneurs began to queue for the opportunity to exploit the trade possibilities with the new nation.30

  Joseph Robidoux viewed the possibilities with delight and in 1822 either dispatched or encouraged Antoine and/or Louis to explore the prospects. Considering the residence of Antoine in Franklin, and firsthand knowledge of the opening of the trail to Santa Fe, a likely assumption can be made that Joseph and his brother discussed getting in on the trade at the earliest date. Another important connection from which Joseph could draw intelligence for a New Mexico venture came from his longtime friend and business associate, Baptiste Roy. Roy went out to New Mexico in the autumn of 1821 with a group of men led by Hugh Glenn. After trapping up the Arkansas River into Colorado, they passed into New Mexican territory in early 1822. They did not do well with the beaver harvest on the Arkansas, but they did find that the Mexicans in the region were “on the Most Frendly [sic] terms.” Working out of “touse” over the winter months of 1822, Glenn's group harvested 1,100 pounds of beaver pelts before returning to St. Louis in the spring.31 It would be most reasonable to assume that considering the close relationship between the two men, Joseph would have heard all about the prospects. We do know that Antoine had mail held at the St. Louis post office in April 1822, indicating his absence from the area. Where he might have been, we do not know. It is also believed that Joseph had dealings with Francois Leclerc and Etienne Provost, both of whom had an immediate interest in opening the New Mexico fur trade. If he provided backing in the form of an outfit, Antoine may have naturally gone along to keep an eye on his older brother's interest.32

  On September 3, 1822, the Franklin, Missouri, newspaper reported, “About three months since, a number of persons, principally of this county, forming two parties, one under the direction of Col. Cooper, and the other of Capt. Becknell, left here for Santa Fe, upon a trading expedition. The former party preceded that of the latter several days, and we regret to learn, by the following extract of a letter from a gentleman of respectability, at Fort Osage, to his friend in this place, that it has met with a serious disaster.” The disaster referred to was reported to General Atkinson at the Council Bluffs post by Michael Immel. He had been on a fur-gathering expedition and encountered Cooper's band. It appeared they had been hard hit by Indian attacks. Immel did not stay with Cooper, so the gentleman writing the letter was left to speculate, “They must either have arrived at Santa Fe before this or perished. The presumption is, that if they were not deprived of their guns and ammunition they could be able to live; consequently, their being left, as the report says, in a starving condition, implies that they were robbed of the means of procuring the necessary food.”33

  Despite the news of a possible disaster, the number of Americans beginning to see El Dorado in the distant province of the new Mexican nation continued to grow. In the same edition, the Intelligencer reported, “A company of about fifty persons, principally from St. Louis and its vicinity are now in town, on their way to Santa Fe. Their purpose is to hunt and obtain furs. We wish them greater success than has fallen to the lot of those mentioned above.”34 Becknell had made no secret of the fact that on his maiden trip into New Mexico he planned to “trade for horses and mules, and catch wild animals of every description.” Clearly he believed furs to be an important part of the trade, and others quickly came to the same assumption, no doubt Joseph Robidoux included in that lot. Eventually American traders brought cotton cloth and manufactured goods to Santa Fe over Becknell's trail and took home furs, mules, and gold and silver coins, but the father of the route to New Mexico went quickly into the fur trade business, trapping and trading for beaver pelts.35

  Though the Robidouxs had an early connection with the town, there is no record that Antoine or his brothers ever used Franklin as a base for departure over the trail. Joseph supplied from St. Louis and operated out of Council Bluffs, controlled the distribution of his merchandise from there, and leaving from that post and dissecting northwest Kansas actually added little time or distance to the trek to Santa Fe. Joseph did make periodic trips down to St. Louis. His wife and young children still resided there; his chief supplier and business confidant, Pierre Chouteau Jr., ran company operations from there; and the family still had business
and private property in the city and surrounding country. His face would have been recognized at almost every landing point along the way between the Platte and the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. Typical of the point, the traveler Louis Bompart reported in his journal on May 22, 1822, “Today we met Messrs Robidoux and Papin coming from the Platte River, going to St. Louis.”36

  American merchants from Missouri had caught the bug and were not to be detoured from the pot of gold the Mexican province had come to symbolize. The Missouri Intelligencer reported more persons planning to go and quoted some Americans who had already been to Santa Fe. “It is becoming a familiar operation for our citizens to visit this capital. Mr. Glenn, of Cincinnati, who had a trading house on the Arkansas, has just returned; also Mr. Jas. M'Night [McKnight] who had been a prisoner for a good part of ten years, and his brother Mr. John M'Night, who went in search of him upward of a year ago. From all we can learn from these travelers, the people of Santa Fe and of the internal provinces, are exceedingly ignorant, destitute of commerce, and of all spirit of enterprise.”37

  There are a couple of brief but tantalizing bits of information that support the Brothers Robidoux, under Joseph's leadership, jumping quickly into the Santa Fe trade. On August 1, 1823, Benjamin O'Fallon, the Indian agent on the upper Missouri, wrote a letter to Joshua Pilcher, the principal partner of the Missouri Fur Company at Council Bluffs. Ostensibly, O'Fallon's letter dealt primarily with the Arikara War, and he did mention the visit of “His Royal highness the prince of Wurttemberg,” which did not seem to impress him much. Then he wrote this observation, “Robidouxs hunters & trappers have returned to the mountains, except a few men, who start in a few days hence.” Now clearly, the comment provides good evidence that Joseph had dispatched a company of men, probably under Louis or Antoine, or both, either late in 1822 or early in 1823 to New Mexico. The timeframe for a fall and spring trapping season would be correct, putting the party back at the Bluffs during the summer. An early August departure then allowed the trappers enough time to return for the fall trapping season of 1823. That a party working for Joseph had returned, and from the inference, did plan to leave again, in separate parties, makes it clear it was not the initial trip west.38