Book Read Free

The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West

Page 35

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

  Primary Materials

  Abstracts of Indian Trade Licenses, House and Senate Documents

  American State Papers

  Bills and Resolutions of the House of Representatives

  Boder Collection, St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce

  Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St.
Louis

  Huntington Library: Ritch and Fort Sutter Papers

  Journal of the United States House of Representatives

  Journal of the United States Senate

  Kansas Historical Society: William Clark Papers

  Missouri Historical Society Collections, St. Louis, Missouri, including the following:

  American Fur Company Papers, Andrew Drips Papers, Auguste Chouteau Papers, Chouteau-Papin Collection, Chouteau Family Papers, Pierre Chouteau Collection, James Kennerly Papers and Diary, Chouteau-Maffitt Collection, Hempstead Papers, Sublette Papers, St. Louis Recorded Archives Index.

  National Archives and Records Administration: Bounty Land, Pension, and Indian Agency Files

  New Mexico State Library: Mexican Archives of New Mexico

  Records of Buchanan County, Missouri

  Records of the City of St. Joseph, Missouri

  St. Joseph Museums Incorporated Collections

  Statutes at Large, United States Congress

  Newspapers

  Missouri Gazette

  Missouri Intelligencer

  Missouri-Louisiana Gazette

  St. Joseph Adventure

  St. Joseph Gazette

  St. Joseph Weekly West

  St. Louis Republican

  Secondary Sources

  Alter, Cecil. “Auerbach Memoirs.” Utah Historical Quarterly 9, no. 1–2 (1941): 53.

  Bailey, William McCrea. Fort Uncompahgre. Silverton, CO: Silverton Standard, 1990.

  Barton, John. “Antoine Robidoux and the Fur Trade of the Uinta Basin, 1824–1844.” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1989.

  Beattie, George, and Helen Beattie. Heritage of the Valley: San Bernardino's First Century. Pasadena, CA: San Pasqual Press, 1939.

  Beck, Warren. New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

  Bidwell, John. Echoes of the Past About California. Edited by Milo Milton Quaife. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1928.

  Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

  Bloom, Lansing B., ed. “Group of Kearny Letters.” New Mexico Historical Review 5, no. 1 (January 1930): 31.

  Boder, Bartlett. “Jean Laffite and Joseph Robidoux.” Museum Graphics 2, no. 4 (Fall 1950): 6–10.

  ———. “Old Saint Jo,” Museum Graphics 6, no. 2 (Spring 1954): 8.

  ———. “Robidoux and the Fur Trade in Saint Joseph, Missouri.” Museum Graphics 14, no. 2 (Spring 1962): 4–6.

  “The Brothers Robidoux.” The Santa Fean 6, no. 3 (April 1978): 38–40.

  Brown, John, and James Boyd. History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The Western Historical Association, 1922.

  Brown, Joseph. “Field Notes on the Santa Fe Trail Survey.” In Southwest on the Turquoise Trail. Edited by Archer Butler Hulbert. Denver, CO: Denver Public Library, 1933.

  Bryan, John. “A Study of the Robidoux Sites in Blocks No. 5 and 6 St. Louis.” Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, National Parks Service, April 1938.

  Butscher, Louis V. “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.

  Carson, Kit. Kit Carson's Own Story of His Life. Edited by Blanche C. Grant. Taos, NM: 1926.

  Carter, Harvey L. “Andrew Drips.” In Mountain Men & Fur Traders of the Far West. Edited by Leroy Hafen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

  Chavez, Fray Angelico. “New Names in New Mexico, 1820–1850.” El Palacio 64, no. 12 (1957): 373.

  Chavez, Thomas E. Manuel Alvarez, 1794–1856: A Southwestern Biography. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1990.

  Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The American Fur Trade of the Far West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

  Christensen, Lawrence O., ed. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

  Christian, Shirley. Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

  Cleary, Patricia. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: A History of Colonial St. Louis. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011.

  Cleland, Robert Glass. This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and Fur Traders of the Southwest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950.

  Collet, Oscar. Index to Instruments Affecting Real Estate Recorded in the Office of Recorder of Deeds in the County of St. Louis, Mo. Grantors, Vol. I—Part III. N–Z. St. Louis, MO: Ennis, Stationers, Printers, and Binders, 1974.

  Craver, Rebecca McDowell. The Impact of Intimacy: Mexican-Anglo Intermarriage in New Mexico, 1821–1846. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1982.

  Dale, Harrison. The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific 1822–1829. Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1918.

  DeVoto, Bernard, ed. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953.

  ———. The Year of Decision 1846. New York: St. Martin's, 2000.

  Drumm, Stella, ed. Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: the Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin 1846–1847. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1926.

  Fausz, Frederick. Founding St. Louis: First City of the New West. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011.

  Ferris, Warren. Life in the Rocky Mountains 1830–1835. Edited by Herbert Auerbach. Salt Lake City, UT: Rocky Mountain Book Shop, 1940.

  Foley, William. A History of Missouri: Volume I, 1673–1820. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971.

  ———. The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.

  Foley, William, and C. David Rice. The First Chouteaus: River Barons of Early St. Louis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

  Fremont, John C. The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1845.

  Frost, David. Notes on General Ashley, The Overland Trail, and South Pass. Barre, MA: Barre Gazette, 1960.

  Galvin, John, ed. Western America in 1846–47. John Howell Books, 1956.

  Garraghan, Gilbert. Saint Ferdinand de Florissant. Chicago: 1923.

  Gibson, George Rutledge. Journal of a Soldier Under Kearny and Doniphan, 1846–1847. Southwest History Series, edited by Ralph Bieber. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1935.

  Gitlin, Jay. The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

  Hafen, Leroy, ed. French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

  ———. The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. 10 volumes. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1965–1972.

  ———. Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

  ———. Trappers of the Far West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

  ———. “Etienne Provost.” In Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1965.

  Hafen, Leroy, and Ann Hafen. Old Spanish Trail. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1954.

  Hardeman, Nicholas. Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Western Movement, 1750–1900. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977.

  Hewitt, J. N. B., ed. Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz: An Account of His Experiences Among Fur Traders and American Indians on the Mississippi and the Upper Missouri Rivers During the Years 1846–1852. Translated by Myrtis Jarrell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970.

  Hill, Joseph. “Antoine Robidoux, Kingpin in the Colorado River Fur Trade, 1824–1844.” Colorado Magazine 7, no. 4 (July 1930): 126.

  Hine, Robert V. Edward Kern and American Expansion. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni
versity Press, 1962.

  History of Buchanan County, Missouri. Union Historical Society, 1881.

  Hoig, Stan. The Chouteaus: First Family of the Fur Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

  Holmes, Elmer Wallace. History of Riverside County California. Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1912.

  Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. Covered Wagon Women. 10 volumes. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1983.

  Hulbert, Archer. Southwest on the Turquoise Trail. Denver, CO: Denver Public Library, 1933.

  Hyslop, Stephen G. Bound for Santa Fe: The Road to New Mexico and the American Conquest, 1806–1848. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.

  Jackson, Donald, ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents 1783–1854. 2 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

  Kelly, Charles. “Trapper in the Utah Wilderness.” Desert Magazine (July 1939): 3–5, 25.

  ———. “The Forgotten Bastion: Old Fort Robidoux.” Utah Magazine (October 1946): 24–25, 40–41.

  Kelly, William. An Excursion to California Over the Prairie, Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas. London: 1851.

  Knox, Dudley. Naval Sketches of the War in California. New York: Random House, 1939.

  Lamar, Howard. The Trader on the American Frontier: Myth's Victim. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977.

  Lecompte, Janet. Pueblo Hardscrabble Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832–1856. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.

  ———. “The Chouteaus and the St. Louis Fur Trade.” In Papers of the St. Louis Fur Trade. Edited by William R. Swagerty. Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1991.

  Lewis, Hugh. Robidoux Chronicles: French-Indian Ethnoculture in the Trans-Mississippi West. Vancouver, B.C.: Trafford, 2004.

  Logan, Sheridan. Old St. Jo. John Sublett Logan Foundation, 1979.

  Luttig, John C. The Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri 1812–1813. www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/Luttig/luttig.html.

 

‹ Prev