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Illusions of Independence View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository ILLUSIONS OF INDEPENDENCE: THE TETON SIOUX AND THE AMERICAN FUR TRADE, 1804-1854 By KURT ANDERSON Bachelor of Science in Zoology Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 1979 Master of Arts in History University of South Florida Tampa, Florida 2005 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 2011 ILLUSIONS OF INDEPENDENCE: THE TETON SIOUX AND THE AMERICAN FUR TRADE, 1804-1854 Dissertation Approved: Dr. L.G. Moses Dissertation Adviser Dr. Richard C. Rohrs Dr. Michael Smith Dr. Brad Bays Dr. Sheryl A. Tucker Dean of the Graduate College ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 Purpose ................................................................................................................ 1 Historiography……………………………………………………………………..7 Research Method…………………………………………………………………13 Chapter Synopses…………………………………………………………………19 I. PRELUDE, 1804-1815……………………………………………………………..33 “Before Lewis and Clark”………………………………………………………....33 First Encounters…………………………………………………………………...35 Teton Gauntlet…………………………………………………………………….40 Early Competition…………………………………………………………………43 The Great Race…………………………………………………………………….53 Manuel Lisa………………………………………………………………………..62 Peace On the Missouri……………………………………………………………..64 II. ESTABLISHING A FOOTHOLD, 1815-1824……………………………………66 Early French Traders………………………………………………………………66 Joshua Pilcher……………………………………………………………………...71 The Columbia Fur Company………………………………………………………77 Consolidation……………………………………………………………………...84 The Arikara Campaign of 1823……………………………………………………88 A Beginning………………………………………………………………………. 91 iii Chapter Page III. COMPETITION, CONSOLIDATION, AND EXPANSION, 1824-1832…….. 97 Henry and Ashley……………………………………………………………….. 97 The First Treaties………………………………………………………………..111 George Catlin……………………………………………………………………115 Catlin’s “Big Year”……………………………………………………………...120 Sioux Portraits…………………………………………………………………...125 IV. TRANSITIONS, 1832-1837……………………………………………………128 The Upper Missouri Outfit……………………………………………………...128 Pierre Chouteau, Jr………………………………………………………………132 Fort Pierre………………………………………………………………………..135 Liquor Trafficking……………………………………………………………….141 The Western Sioux………………………………………………………………145 Fort Laramie……………………………………………………………………..152 V. THE GOLDEN YEARS, 1837-1846……………………………………………159 The Fort Pierre-Fort Laramie Trail……………………………………………...159 The Smallpox Epidemic of 1837………………………………………………..164 Intertribal Wars………………………………………………………………….170 The Buffalo Robe and Hide Trade………………………………………………175 A Campaign Against Alcohol…………………………………………………...184 VI. A COLLISION OF CULTURES, 1846-1854………………………………….194 Beginning of the End…………………………………………………………....194 First Wheels on the Plains…………………………………….............................196 Emigrants on the Platte………………………………………………………….202 Sale of Fort Laramie………………………………………………………..........212 The End………………………………………………………………………….224 VII. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………...228 VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY….………………………………………………………….233 iv INTRODUCTION I The nineteenth-century history of the Teton Sioux is a study of contradictions. For instance, while fur-trade scholar Hiram Martin Chittenden notes that “the Sioux were exceedingly troublesome in the early years of the fur trade and . came to be known as the pirates of the Missouri,” he subsequently concludes that they eventually “dropped their hostile attitude . and in later years gave the traders little or no trouble.”1 And while Oglala Sioux historian Vine Deloria, Jr. claims that “[t]he Sioux, my own people, have a great tradition of conflict [and] were the only nation ever to annihilate the United States Cavalry three times in succession [,]”2 Western historian Richard White observes that the Sioux found the Americans to be useful, if dangerous, allies during their third period of expansion. For over three decades . the ambitions of the Sioux and the Americans proved generally complimentary, and as late as 1838 Joshua Pilcher, the American agent for the upper Missouri would write that ‘no Indians ever manifested a greater degree of friendship for the whites in general, or more respect for our Government, than the Sioux.’3 The “over three decades” referred to by White were the years from 1809 to 1854; in fact, for most of the American fur trade’s active years on the northern and central plains, the Teton Sioux maintained peaceful relations with American traders, officials, and settlers. 1 Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, 2 vols., with introduction and notes by Stallo Vinton and foreword by James P. Ronda (New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1935; reprint, Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1986), 2: 851 (page citations are to the reprint edition). 2 Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1969), 22. 3 Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Journal of American History 65 (September 1978): 328. 1 Although this perceptual anomaly—i.e., the Sioux alternating between either accommodation or hostility—broadly informs this research, the larger significance of the Tetons’ flexible foreign relations with American traders, trappers, government officials, and settlers lies in how those relations affected Teton occupation of the Platte River valley adjacent to the Oregon Trail throughout the 1830s and 1840s, an occupation which firmly established their military dominance of the north-central plains. One of the purposes of this dissertation is to explain this phenomenon. Toward that end, three possibilities present themselves: (1) did the Western Sioux—primarily the Brules and Oglalas—follow American traders to the Platte; or (2) did those traders extend their operations west of the Missouri River to secure lucrative trade relations with the westward-expanding Sioux; or (3) was their simultaneous presence in the region, at least initially, largely unrelated to each group’s discrete motivations, circumstances, and activities? This third possibility sustains a more sophisticated and intellectually- satisfying explanation for the simultaneous presence of the Teton Sioux and American fur traders in the Platte River valley from 1834 to 1854 and supports the central thesis of this dissertation. The history of the Teton, or Western, Sioux in the first half of the nineteenth century is one of continuous expansion from the middle Missouri River westward to the headwaters of the Yellowstone River and south by southeast to below the South Platte and Republican rivers. Significantly, all seven divisions of the Tetons took part in the armed conquest of the northern and central plains. These divisions include: (1) Sitcangou (Brules), (2) Oglala, (3) Minneconjou, (4) Sihasapa (Blackfoot Sioux), (5) Ohenonpa 2 (Two Kettles), (6) Itaziptco (Without Bows or Sans Arcs), and, (7) Hunkpapa.4 Scholars have failed to answer satisfactorily whether the conquest of this enormous area throughout the first half of the nineteenth century by the mounted Tetons occurred prior to, simultaneously with, or as a consequence of the westward-expanding American fur trade in the years from 1804 to 1854. A second argument presented here is that the Tetons’ occupation of the north-central plains from the Missouri to the Platte River valley was one of the unintended consequences of the activities of American fur traders throughout this region—activities largely unrelated to Teton migrations westward from the Missouri. Although its etymology is beyond the scope of this dissertation, the term Sioux requires a brief explanation. As a collective label, it encompasses the seven traditional “council fires” or “bands” of the Dakota: (1) Bdewakanton, (2) Wahpekute, (3) Sisseton, (4) Wahpeton, (5) Yankton, (6) Yanktonai, (7) Teton. The first four of these bands speak the “D” dialect of the Dakota language and are known as the Eastern or Santee Sioux; the next two bands are the Middle Sioux, speaking the “N” dialect of that language; while the last band, also known as the Western Sioux, speak the “L” dialect of the same language. As derived from these three dialects, the Eastern, Middle, and Western Sioux are also known as Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota, respectively.5 As the subject of this dissertation focuses almost exclusively on the Teton band of the Dakota, the following conventions apply throughout: Tetons, Teton Sioux, Western Sioux, Lakota, and Sioux appear 4 Garrick Mallery, Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, “The Dakota Winter Counts,” 89-146; “Pictographs of the North American Indians, plates VI-LI, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D C, 1886; reprint, Garrick Mallery, The Dakota and Corbusier Winter Counts, Reprints in Anthropology, 36 vols. (Lincoln, NE: J&L Reprint Company, 1987), 97-98, (hereafter, Dakota Winter Counts). 5 James H. Howard, Yanktonai Ethnohistory and the John K. Bear Winter Count (Lincoln, NE: Augstums Printing Service, 1976), 4. 3 interchangeably in the text, unless specifically noted otherwise. To avoid confusion, the names of the seven divisions of the Tetons—Brules, Oglalas, Minneconjous, Blackfoot Sioux, Two Kettles, Sans Arcs, and Hunkpapas—appear in these, their most common forms; all seven of these divisions receive the designation
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