Missouri River National Recreational River

Territory. The second expedition was no more successful, ending at a village where trader Trade, Tribes, and Transition Antoine Lecuyer took “not less than two wives… and wasted a great deal of the goods of the on the Missouri company.” The company’s third expedition under James MacKay and John Evans successfully The , America’s first fashion-driven reached the villages eight years before industry, stimulated Euro-American exploration of Lewis & Clark’s better-known American the expedition. several decades before Lewis & Clark. One of the earliest trappers and traders in the was most important, the Yankton area was Pierre Dorion, Sr., who married dense undercoat being used into the Yankton tribe around 1785 and was a short- to make felt hats. The term member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in entire world used furs, from 1804. He served as liaison and translator for the wolf to muskrat, for warm clothing in this era council near Calumet Bluff. before synthetic insulating materials. In these early days, independent traders and small Trade was nothing new to the Plains Tribes; the parties were at risk of being relieved of their goods various cultures that occupied this land at different by tribes that chose raiding over trading. Later, times had exchanged produce, dried meat, tools, and large companies built impressive posts that not only weapons for thousands of years. By the mid 1700s, offered protection, but projected an image of the Ihanktonwan Nakota (Yankton ) hosted a permanence that led to long-term trade partnerships. trade fair near the of the James and In some instances, the posts were established at the Missouri rivers. This annual event was a forerunner request of one or more tribes. of the flea markets and swap meets of today.

Big Business Early Outsiders In the early 1800s, the demand for beaver pelts for European traders brought manufactured goods that hatmaking remained strong. Between 1807 and were new to the American Indians. These products 1812 Spaniard established posts from included metal cooking pots, knives, guns, coffee, the site of today’s Omaha to the mouth of the sugar, fabrics, and Bighorn River in . Ultimately beads and unsuccessful, Lisa abandoned all of them by 1820. ornaments. In 1822 a group of managers, Competition shaken out in a merger with Hudson Bay Company, became keen and formed the Columbia Fur Company. Within five sometimes violent years their company had Missouri River posts among British, operating near the Niobrara, Vermillion, and Big French, and Library of Congress Sioux rivers. At that time, ’s Spanish companies. There are accounts indicating bought out Columbia and that French traders visited the Big Sioux Valley made it the Upper Missouri Outfit of the Western before 1700, with British Canadians following early Department of the giant American Fur Company. in that century, reaching present-day by 1773. Spaniard Juan Munier traded on the Missouri First keelboats, then steamboats brought tons of near the a few years later. A French goods from around the world to dozens of remote expedition under Jacques D’Eglise reached the trading posts Mandan villages in present-day in and forts; beads 1790 and brought back stories of British trade in the from Italy, area. metal ornaments from Germany, In response to these incursions, the Spanish vermillion government financed The Commercial Company pigment from for the Discovery of the Nations of the Upper China, and iron Montana Historical Society Missouri, known as the Missouri Company, and axe heads, guns, sent three expeditions intended to reach the Mandan and other tools from America’s foundries. The villages. The first, led by Jean Baptiste Truteau boats left the posts loaded with bales of pelts and only reached a point a few miles upstream of what hides harvested by the American Indian men and would later be the site of Fort Randall where they tanned by the women. As the beaver population built the first constructed post in the future Dakota dwindled and fashions changed from beaver felt hats to silk hats, the fur companies’ focus clothing, and shelter, and in some cultures thanked changed from beaver pelts to buffalo robes. These the spirit of the animal for its sacrifice. The desire were tanned bison hides with the fur on, marketed for more manufactured goods demanded more pelts as lap robes for the and hides. This need for more conflicted with carriage or buggy, as traditional values. rugs, and as bed coverings. The fur In addition, American Indians were introduced to companies shipped alcohol and inadvertently exposed to deadly other tanned pelts, diseases to which they had no immunity. Four such as otter and fox, years before Lewis and Clark’s expedition, three as far as Russia and quarters of the Ponca tribe died of smallpox. China, placing the American Indians at one end of a Another epidemic of this disease, carried by a global supply network. steamboat passenger in 1837, killed 10,000 to 20,000 Plains Indians, including over 90% of the Mandan Nation. As a result of these epidemics, Cultural Exchange some tribes were left too weak to defend themselves In the fur trade, two radically different cultures from other tribes and outside invaders. This came together to do business, usually peacefully. sometimes resulted in alliances of former Traders took on the American Indian custom of adversaries, as decimated tribes banded together for trade as a social event to include the exchange of protection against stronger nations. gifts and the sharing of a pipe, food, and news before the start of negotiations. Fur company employees, from the engagés (laborers) to the End of the Era bourgeois (managers), often took American Indian The fur trade did not end all at once; the decline of or Métis (mixed blood) wives. It was not unusual trade moved up the river as the tribes were relegated for a chief to try to match his daughters to fur trade to reservations and their access to buffalo became employees, for limited. The American Fur Company found more traders had easy profit in shipping reservation and military supplies access to goods than in trading for hides and pelts. Locally, and could offer American Fur Company’s Fort Vermillion and the family the Ponca Post both closed in the 1850s as trade protection of a dwindled. Shortly after the departure of American trade fort. The Fur, a representative of Frost, Todd, & Co. began PS photo by Linda Gordon Rokosz

mixed-blood N trading from a tent near the site of Yankton. sons of these Reenactment at Fort Union Trading Post NHS unions often found themselves outcast by both By 1859 the Yankton Sioux and Ponca tribes had white and Indian cultures and sometimes found moved to reservations and been provided with acceptance and opportunity only in the fur trade. annuity goods and farm equipment in accordance with their treaties; most of their hunting ceased, and Through the fur trade, American Indians acquired Frost, Todd, & Company conveniently became a the conveniences of Euro-American technology. townsite developer. The remaining free-roaming This cultural mix generally led to an easier lifestyle tribes continued to hunt and trade buffalo robes into for the natives. They quickly incorporated trade the 1870s as change and settlers swept inexorably goods into utilitarian, decorative, and ceremonial up the river. Although a half century of trade- articles. Metal pots replaced buffalo hide cooking related American containers, steel knives replaced stone, and rifles Indian hunting had and muskets replaced or supplemented the bow and a serious impact on arrow. Clothing became more colorful with the the bison introduction of European fabrics, and glass beads population, it took replaced or supplemented porcupine quills. They non-Indian also incorporated beads into items such as knife commercial hunters only a decade to bring the sheaths, arrow quivers, and moccasins, and added species to the brink of extinction. By 1890, the red ribbons to ceremonial bundles and prayer remaining free Plains Tribes had been confined to offerings. They even reservations, and the era of intercultural private decorated muskets, enterprise came to an end. rifles and traditional weapons with brass While the fur trade and its goods brought changes wire, silver ornaments for both the better and the worse, it was the force of and paints purchased the U.S. Army and the settlers’ demands for land from the traders. that left the Plains Tribes restricted to reservations and struggling to maintain their pride, traditions and Dependency and Disease languages in a world that was no longer their own. Not all of the traders’ influence was beneficial, however. Dependence on imported goods sometimes led to a more materialistic attitude and wasteful hunting. Traditionally, Plains Indians took only the game they needed for their own food,