The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West

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by Robert J. Willoughby


  10. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:310.

  11. Merrill J. Mattes, Platte River Road Narratives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 73.

  12. Ibid., 438.

  13. Merrill J. Mattes, “Fur Traders and Trail Blazers,” Overland Journal 6, no. 3 (1988): 4.

  14. Willoughby, Robidoux's Town, 55–56.

  15. Ibid., 59–60.

  16. Gazette, January 8, 1847.

  17. Ibid., May 28, 1847.

  18. Letter, P. Chouteau Jr., to Andrew Drips, 23 April 1847, Andrew Drips Papers, MHS. Harvey L. Carter, “Andrew Drips,” in Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West, ed. Leroy Hafen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 342.

  19. Hewitt, Kurz, 40.

  20. Ibid., 36–37.

  21. Benjamin Hardin to M. & F. Robidoux, August 12, 1847. Transcription of the original letter book owned by Riverda Harding Jordan in the file 350, box 8, the Bartlett Boder Collection, Missouri Western State University, St. Joseph, Missouri. Hereafter cited as Boder.

  22. Hardin to Joseph Robidoux, September 17, 1847, Boder.

  23. Ibid., October 13, 1847.

  24. Ibid., October 18, 1847.

  25. Ibid., December 16, 1847, December 29, 1847, February 7, 1848.

  26. Ibid., October 5, 1848, and November 5, 1848.

  27. Hewitt, Kurz, 67. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:313.

  28. Letter, S. C. Slater to John Slater, July 3, 1848, Missouri History Collection, MHS.

  29. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:310.

  30. St. Joseph Gazette, October 27, 1848.

  31. Hewitt, Kurz, 46–47.

  32. St. Joseph Gazette, May 4, 1849.

  33. Letter, Bruce Husband to Andrew Drips, May 24, 1849, Andrew Drips Papers, MHS.

  34. J. Goldsborough Bruff, April 27, 1849. Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines, eds., Gold Rush The Journals, Drawings, and Other Papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff, April 2, 1849–July 20, 1851 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), 6.

  35. Sallie Hester, April 27, 1849, diary reprinted in San Francisco Argonaut, September 12–19, 1925.

  36. Margaret A. Frink, April 23, 1850, diary in Kenneth L. Holmes, ed., Covered Wagon Women (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1983), 2:74–76.

  37. Bruff, May 8, 1849, 8.

  38. Ibid., May 7, 1849, 7.

  39. Frink, May 8, 1850, 2:77.

  40. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:308–309.

  41. William Kelly, An Excursion to California Over the Prairie, Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas (London: 1851), 1:152. Also see Merrill J. Mattes, “Robidoux's Trading Post at ‘Scott's Bluffs,’ and the California Gold Rush,” Nebraska History 30, no. 2 (June 1949): 95–138.

  42. Raymond Settle, ed., March of the Mounted Riflemen (Lincoln: Bison Books, 1989), 323.

  43. Mattes, “Robidoux's Trading Post,” 113. Also see Mattes, Narratives, 162.

  44. The Diary of Niles Searls, June 25, 1849, manuscript, The Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley. The journal is also published in The Diary of a Pioneer and Other Papers (The Searls Family, 1940).

  45. Georgia Read and Ruth Gaines, Gold Rush: The Journals, Drawings, and Other Papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), 30–31. An earlier edition published in 1944 provides a more complete rendition of this quotation. See Mattes, “Robidoux's Trading Post,” 113.

  46. Mattes, Narratives, 196.

  47. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:309.

  48. St. Joseph Gazette, September 7, 1849.

  49. Journal of Thaddeus Culbertson, March 29, 1850, Culbertson Family Papers, MHS.

  50. “Obituary of Charles Robidoux,” St. Joseph Gazette, September 18, 1850.

  51. Hewitt, Kurz, 68–69; Robidoux, 125.

  52. “Obituary of Charles Robidoux,” St. Joseph Gazette, September 18, 1850.

  53. Hewitt, Kurz, 67; Mattes, 8:313.

  54. “California a Humbug,” St. Joseph Gazette, December 25, 1850.

  55. St. Joseph Gazette, April 23, 1851.

  56. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:311.

  57. Louis V. Butscher, “A Brief Biography of Prince Paul Wilhelm of Wurttemberg (1797–1860) With His Account of Adventures in the Great American Desert,” New Mexico Historical Review 17, no. 3 (July 1942): 213–215. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:311.

  58. There are references to the New Mexicans of Agua Mansa and Robidoux's rancho being a voter precinct in Marjorie Wolcott, Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849–1875 (Los Angeles: McBride Printing Company, 1929), 187, 219, 271. Nelson, 51.

  59. Beattie, 66, 184, 233. Also see Holmes, 19; Brown, 320; Nelson, 56.

  60. Beattie, 182, 230.

  61. Ibid., 199–200, 216.

  62. Marjorie Wolcott, Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849–1875 (Los Angeles: McBride Printing Company, 1929), 92, 147–148. Beattie, 118, 243, 259–260; Nelson, 53–54.

  63. Beattie, 109–110; Nelson, 59.

  64. Nelson, 60.

  65. Brown, 319–320; Beattie, 423; Weber, “Louis Robidoux,” 8:326–327.

  Chapter 12

  1. Abstract of Wills and Administrations, June 4, 1852, Buchanan County, Missouri, Book B–157.

  2. Hewitt, Kurz, 67–68.

  3. Ibid., 62–63.

  4. Ibid., 64–66.

  5. Ibid., 67–71.

  6. Bounty Land Warrant Application File 32986–160–55, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. Hereafter cited as Land File. Also see Wallace, 40–41.

  7. Land File. Wallace, 58.

  8. Journal of the House of Representatives, 34th Congress, March 11, 1856, Volume 51:660.

  9. Ibid., 34th Congress, March 25, 1856, Volume 51:718.

  10. Bills and Resolution, House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 1st Session, May 23, 1856. Report No. 157, House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 1st Session, May 23, 1856.

  11. Journal of the Senate of the United States, 34th Congress, August 9, 1856, Volume 47:551.

  12. Ibid., August 22, 1856, Volume 47:665. Also see, Statutes at Large, 34th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 25: An Act for the Relief of Antoine Robedeau.

  13. Journal of the House of Representatives, 34th Congress, July 7, 1856, Volume 52:1160.

  14. Ibid., July 12, 1856, Volume 52:1194. Report No. 226, House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 1st Session, July 19, 1856.

  15. Ibid., July 19, 1856, Volume 52:1238.

  16. Journal of the House of Representatives, 34th Congress, January 2, 1857, Volume 53:179.

  17. Ibid., March 3, 1857, Volume 53:674.

  18. Antoine Robidoux to Edward Kern, June 22, 1857, Fort Sutter Papers No. 151, Huntington Library, Huntington, California.

  19. Antoine Robidoux to Edward Kern, November 7, 1857, Fort Sutter Papers, No. 152, Huntington Library, Huntington, California.

  20. Journal of the House of Representatives, 35th Congress, 1st Session, February 4, 1858, 292–293. H.R. 772, Bills and Resolutions of the House of Representatives, 35th Congress, 2nd Session, January 7, 1859.

  21. Land File.

  22. Cleland, 34.

  23. St. Joseph Gazette, August 29, 1860.

  24. Nelson, 61.

  25. Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico's Ancient Capital (Santa Fe: Santa Fe New Mexican Publishing Corporation, 1925), 423.

  26. Walcott, 268–270; Nelson, 62.

  27. Brown, 320–321; Weber, “Louis Robidoux,” 8:328.

  28. St. Joseph Morning Herald, May 28, 1868.

  29. Ibid., May 29, 1868.

  Bibliography

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