By 1840, a post office had opened at the Blacksnake Hills, with Robidoux's son Jules as the first postmaster. In February 1842, the county court asked Robidoux to build a tobacco warehouse at his landing on the Missouri River. The entry in the county record book read: “ordered by the court that Joseph Robidoux be authorized to erect a warehouse for the reception and inspection of tobacco at Robidoux's Landing on the Missouri River of the following dimensions: to wit 32 feet square with an offset of 12 feet by 16 feet thereunto ‘anne-seed' framed and well-weathered boarded 7 feet high and therein from the said Joseph Robidoux enters into bond with security to the satisfaction of the court in the sum of $2,000.”22 Tobacco cultivation came with those migrating from Kentucky and Tennessee into the area. The soil in the region seemed well suited to the growth of burley tobacco, which is still produced to this day around the town of Weston, some twenty-five miles south of St. Joseph.
Besides the structure for tobacco, Robidoux built a warehouse for hemp. Dr. Silas McDonald introduced the first hemp crops into the area in 1840. It remained the staple crop of the area until after the Civil War. Hemp seed, purchased for around $80 per ton, required a low initial investment. With little or no cultivation, an acre could produce as much as 1,000 pounds of fiber, which sold for around $3–4 per hundred weight. After cutting, hemp breaking, the practice of thrashing the stalks to separate the fibers, called for the greatest expenditure of labor. It was hard, physical work, beating the stalks against a wooden beam. Generally, a farmer who owned them assigned that part of the process to slaves or temporarily hired them from a slave owner if they could afford to. The warehouse at Robidoux's Landing became a major trans-shipment point for area crops heading down river to St. Louis and eventually New Orleans.
Along with the people, and the business and commerce that accompanied them, came the criminal element. During October 1842, robbers visited Robidoux's store and made off with four canvas bags filled with silver coins. The physical evidence amounted to not much more than a shoe that had been lost in the mud by one of the thieves. Yet Robidoux had a fairly good idea of who the perpetrators were. He asked the local justice of the peace, Samuel Hall of Washington Township, to issue an arrest warrant for the four Spencer brothers and a couple of their friends. As the story evolved, two of the detained suspects were threatened with their lives during questioning. The interrogation, shaky by modern legal standards to be sure, produced the desired outcome and demonstrated a good example of frontier justice which nearly always involved a rope. Eventually all the money came back to Joe Robidoux and no one was hanged.23
In November 1842, the county court appropriated $6,000 for a new courthouse to be built at Sparta. That touched off a public discussion among farmers and merchants in the county that clearly preferred and recognized the potential of Robidoux's Landing, despite the old man's reluctance to lay out a town. People began to agitate, especially the nearly two hundred residents living on Robidoux's property or its periphery. Only a small minority within the county supported the Sparta site and despite the county court's attempts to make it a viable county seat, little had been built there. Joseph's property appealed to those with an eye to setting up business houses, next to the river and its superior transportation link, and the area craftsmen wanting to settle into shops with fixed addresses.
According to an article written by a reporter for the St. Louis Reveille who visited Robidoux's burgeoning settlement, the final decision by Joseph to act to save his property came in 1843. “May 1843, Mr. Robidoux was just mounting his horse to visit the land office at Plattsburg for the purpose of entering his quarter section. The people of Buchanan County tried to deprive the old gentleman of his pre-emption claims in order to sell out the tract, to build county offices with the proceeds. But the land officers did him justice, and he found himself in a few weeks, metamorphosed from an Indian trader into a dignified proprietor of a town, sporting his cane and bowing with French ease and suavity to numerous strangers flocking to his retreat.”24
In the spring of 1843, two surveyors, Frederick W. Smith and Simeon Kemper, approached Robidoux about laying out the town. At that time, a hemp crop covered the hillside field. As recounted in family stories, old Robidoux finally agreed to a friendly competition between the two surveyors to draw up plans. Both could survey and plat the site and then he would pick whichever of the plans he liked best. There exists no evidence that Robidoux paid either of them for their work. But Smith, who held a plot of land directly east of Robidoux's, clearly benefited when the site became a town. His holding turned out to be one of the town's first additions. In early July 1843, the two surveyors presented their plans to Robidoux.25
Like most nineteenth-century American town plans, both plats copied the popular grid pattern, streets crisscrossing at right angles and forming square blocks. The town sat hard against the Missouri River on the west and extended east approximately seven blocks. The north and south dimension extended ten blocks. Both surveyors numbered the north-south streets, and named the east-west streets. Smith primarily used the names of Robidoux's children, beginning with Faraon and continuing south, Jules, Francis, Felix, Edmond, Charles, Sylvanie, Angelique, and Messanie. Kemper named his town plan “Robidoux,” appealing directly to the sense of proprietorship, while Smith named his “St. Joseph” after Robidoux's patron saint. Old Robidoux chose Smith's plan. One might conclude he did so out of some modesty, but as Robidoux later told family members he intended “to sell my land in lots, not give it away in streets.”26 The fact that Smith's plan had narrower streets, sixty feet wide as opposed to Kemper's one hundred feet, proved to be a key factor in the decision. Being an astute businessman, Robidoux saw the potential to squeeze a few more town lots from the 160 acres of his quarter section.27
In July 1843, Robidoux took the Smith plat and the legal description to St. Louis where he recorded it before the state court. While there he also had to settle the issue of the mortgage. He owed Pierre Chouteau Jr. the amount of $6,372.57, held as a lien against the town lots. Though the deed does not specify the basis of the debt, possibly Robidoux had borrowed money over some period of time to originally acquire the property or to consolidate old debts from his trading operations. That debt, and the need to pay it, may very well have provided the final impetus for Robidoux to start laying off lots. Robidoux signed and attested to the town plan, the note, and his statement as proprietor on July 25, 1843. The next day, July 26, Nathaniel Paschall, clerk of the St. Louis Court of Common Pleas, witnessed and accepted the documents. So, with a plan, and a business deal between old family friends consummated, and no doubt the urging of a large number of people back at the Blacksnake Hills, or Robidoux's Landing, the town of St. Joseph came into being. The “birth certificate” began with the phrase, “I, Joseph Robidoux, of the County of Buchanan and the State of Missouri, do hereby declare that I am the proprietor and owner of a certain town named St. Joseph.”28
Despite Joseph's continued love of the wilderness life and the Indian trade, the place that so many saw promise in became a town. Its location, as in nearly all good real estate deals, became the prime factor in attracting buyers for the lots. As the Swiss artist Rudolph Kurz observed, “At first he sold lot for lot at very reasonable prices, in order to induce people to buy them; for instance, he would sell a lot for $10 or for a yoke of oxen. Then according to the convenient location of the plots in question, he steadily advanced the prices. He is now an immensely wealthy property holder, but his 60 papooses, his seven white children, and several brothers in rags and tatters continually consume his substance. Two years ago the city lots had advanced threefold in value. Now a building lot with 40 feet front and a depth of 140 feet, abutting in the rear on an alley is worth from $300 to $600.”29
Merchants, tradesmen, promoters, and speculators moved in and bought hundreds of lots, at $150 for a corner and $100 for an interior space. Robidoux paid off his note to Chouteau within a year. Others saw the value of the location and snapped up adjoining
properties as fast as they could. Those tracts would one day compose most of the city's major additions. Within three years, residents of Buchanan County abandoned the county seat at Sparta, and by nearly unanimous vote proclaimed St. Joseph their new seat of government. The editor of St. Joseph's first newspaper made the case for St. Joseph perfectly clear when he wrote, “St. Joseph is not the centre of the territory of the county, but she may be considered the centre of business, for she is the point at which almost every farmer in the county deals. She is to use a figure, the heart whence commences the life giving principles of trade.”30 Bright seemed the prospects for immediate growth, in population and economic importance, and as a mercantile center for the whole of northwest Missouri.
CHAPTER 9
Dwindling Prospects in the Mountains
By 1839 the beaver trade began to dry up in the once-rich trapping region of the Green River and its tributaries. The trappers who provided so much of the business done by Antoine at his intermountain posts began to wander away. The system of rendezvous, instituted by Ashley fifteen years before, also went away. As Joe Meek, a famous trapper and contemporary of Antoine Robidoux, remembered, “The rendezvous of this year was at Bonneville's old fort on the Green River, and was the last one held in the mountains by the American Fur Company. Beaver was growing scarce, and competition was strong, On the disbanding of the company, some went to Santa Fe, some to California, others to the Lower Columbia, and a few remained in the mountains trapping, and selling their furs to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall. As to the leaders, some of them continued for a few years longer to trade with the Indians, and others returned to the States, to lose their fortunes far more easily than they made them.”1
During 1840, Kit Carson again had business with Antoine at his fort on the Uintah. He reported that he took the furs from the spring hunt in the Utah country to Robidoux's Fort, where he stayed until September. A trapper named Jack Robinson accompanied Carson. They found the beaver “was getting scarce, and finding that it was necessary to try our hand at something else.”2 Referring to the beaver hunt in the winter of 1839, Meek recalled, “times were bad enough among the men so suddenly thrown upon their own resources among the mountains, at a time when that little creature, which had made mountain life tolerable, or possible, was fast being exterminated.” Further, Meek noted, “To make matters more serious, some of the worst of the now unemployed trappers had taken to a life of thieving and mischief which made enemies of the friendly Indians, and was likely to prevent the better disposed from enjoying security among any of the tribes. A party of these renegades, under a man named Thompson, went over to Snake River to steal horses from the Nez Perces. Not succeeding in this, they robbed the Snake Indians of about forty animals, and ran them off to the Uintee, the Indians following and complaining to the whites at Fort Crockett that their people had been robbed by white trappers, and demanding restitution.”3
That being the true case, it must have been difficult for Antoine to remain in business based only on the trade of beaver pelts and the outfitting of local trappers. Antoine Robidoux frequently traded livestock, horses, and mules from New Mexico, taking them mostly to Missouri, but also at his intermountain forts, the one on the “Uintee” specifically mentioned by Meek. How many did he buy from men like Thompson, or how many did his engagés acquire, using the described method? The question of stolen property aside, the items he did sell offered the potential for good profits, and the independent trappers that frequented his posts and other forts along the length of the Rocky Mountains most often traded valuable pelts for the minimal of creature comforts. Thomas Jefferson Farnham, who passed through the intermountain region on his way to Oregon in 1839 and met Joe Meek, Kit Carson, and other noted mountain men, recalled from the upper Arkansas River region near Bent's Fort, “At this place I found a number of independent trappers, who after the spring hunt had come down from the mountains, taken rooms free of rent, stored their furs, and opened a trade for whisky. One skin, valued at four dollars, buys in that market one pint of whisky, no more, no less.”
Farnham noted that the proprietors, with little doubt including Robidoux, always watered down the whiskey. He went on to explain that after the trapper consumed the first pint, “another beaver skin will be taken from the jolly trapper's pack, and another quantity of the joyful mixture obtained.” As time passed, a few hours, a few days, the trappers depleted their stocks. “Thus matters will proceed, until the stores of furs, the hardships of the hunt, the toils and exposures of trapping, the icy streams of the wilderness, the bloody fight, foot to foot, with the knife and tomahawk, and the long days and nights of thirst and starvation are satisfactorily cancelled in the dreamy felicity which whisky, rum, gin, brandy and ipecacuanha, if properly administered, are accustomed to produce.”4
Antoine's outposts on the Gunnison and the Uintah had some competition for the dwindling trapper and Indian trade. During Farnham's travels in 1839 he passed Fort Davy Crockett, located in the Brown's Hole area on the left bank of the Green River. Contemporary in time and design to Antoine's Uintah fort, it lay sixty miles to the north and east, in the far northwest corner of Colorado. Three Americans named Thompson, Craig, and St. Clair had established it about 1834. After the Alamo fight, they named the post in honor of the hero of that battle. Farnham wrote, “The Fort is a hollow square of one story log cabins, with roofs and floors of mud, constructed in the same manner as those of Fort William (Bent's Fort). Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers, who were away on their “fall hunt,” and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians, who had preceded their tribe to this, their winter haunt.” Despite a beautiful natural setting and some popularity with trappers, Fort Davy Crockett also earned the nickname of Fort de Misere because of the wretched conditions there.5
Farnham also gave us a brief but wonderful description of the Indian and trapper trade conducted in the region during the waning days of the beaver hunt. “Here also were the lodges of Mr. Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse; and buffalo robes were spread upon the ground and counter, on which he displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish hooks, and whisky. In exchange for these articles he receives beaver skins from trappers, money from travelers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business.” The Mr. Robinson referred to was probably John “Uncle Jack” Robertson, an early business associate of Antoine Robidoux in the Green River trade.6
According to mountain man Joe Meek, he encountered Antoine near “the mouth of the Uintee” sometime during March 1840. “Then the company of [Robert ‘Doc’] Newell and Meek joined Antoine Rubideau [sic] who had brought goods from Santa Fe to trade with the Indians. Setting out in company, they traded along up Green River to the mouth of Ham's fork, and camped. The snow remained deep in the mountains, and the trappers found great sport in running antelope. On one occasion the men ran a large herd, numbering several hundreds, on to the ice of Green River, where they slaughtered large numbers only for the cruel sport which it afforded. But killing antelope needlessly was not by any means the worst of amusements practiced in Rubideau's camp. That foolish trader occupied himself so often and so long in playing Hand [an Indian game], that before he parted with his new associates he had gambled away his goods, his horses, and even his wife: so that he returned to Santa Fe much poorer than nothing—since he was in debt.”7
Louis did not spend anywhere near the amount of time in the field as his brother Antoine. He much preferred the more civilized surroundings of the urban lifestyle. But things happened in Santa Fe disturbing the peace of its citizens and threatening the commerce that made them prosperous. In 1835, a new governor by the name of Albino Perez arrived in the province of New Mexico. Though a good man, a soldier by trade, and full of ideas to make positive changes, the locals did not accept him. Perez pushed the agenda of the
national government in Mexico City to increase revenue and reduce corruption. The revolt of Americans in Texas also raised concerns about the loyalty of the American business community in New Mexico. His policies quickly raised discontent among the locals, long accustomed to paying little or no taxes. Opponents rallied around General Manual Armijo, a local official from Albuquerque. Armijo began to plot an end to the Perez administration, bringing into the conspiracy area officials and inflaming the Pueblo Indians in the area of Taos. In August 1837, the plot against Perez exploded into a full-scale rebellion. As Perez tried to flee south from Santa Fe, Indians overpowered his small body of men. They decapitated the governor and returned with his head to their camp. The insurgents occupied Santa Fe, looting the holdings of Perez's followers, spreading terror through the community and putting the lives and property of men like Louis Robidoux, anyone known to be American, in jeopardy. Armijo arrived and worked to restore calm, then turned on the insurgents that made his rise possible, finally declaring himself the new governor of New Mexico.8
Calm did return, and Louis continued to engage in local government, winning election to lead the city council. As the first alcalde of Santa Fe, Louis Robidoux not only administered city business, but also dealt justice as a judge or justice of the peace. We find his signature on a document approving a claim that a local father (priest) operated an “Ecclesiastical school for children,” dated February 3, 1839. Then, on February 9, 1839, he signed a request for naturalization from an American trader named Levi Keithly. Keithly wrote, “I ask that you please send all corresponding information to the governor, so that he can provide me with the letter that will reveal my citizenship. Of course I will be present as to validate my request and to endure suitability for me to proceed. I ask again that you please accede to my request and with justice. I swear that I have no malice or bad intentions.”9
The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West Page 22