Fort Union Trading Post THE ASSINIBOINE

Assiniboine Arriving at Fort Union - Karl Bodmer

ASSINIBOINE ORIGINS region of present-day Minnesota tral North Dakota, near today's Assiniboine, pronounced uh- and southwestern Ontario. The Knife River Indian Villages National SIN-uh-boin, comes from the Assiniboine split from the Sioux Historic Site. Chippewa or Algonquian language around 1640 and migrated west­ family and means, "those who cook ward onto the northern plains. FORT UNION AND THE with stones." This refers to stone They adopted the plains culture, ASSINIBOINE boiling, the practice of heating becoming nomadic hunter-gather­ By 1828, when Fort Union was stones directly in a fire and then ers and moving their villages when established, the Assiniboine inhabit­ ed northwest North Dakota, north­ placing them in water to boil it for necessary to find food. Assiniboine east Montana, and southern cooking. British explorers and dress, shelters, tents, and customs Saskatchewan. Kenneth McKenzie, traders also used the name are similar to those of the Plains Fort Union's first bourgeois or post "Stoney" for the tribe. The Cree of the trans-border region of manager, received permission from Assiniboine term for themselves is North Dakota, Montana, and the Assiniboine to establish a trad­ "Nakodabi." Canada. ing post in their midst. McKenzie The Assiniboine speak a Siouan After acquiring horses through parlayed this agreement with the trade with other Indians, the dialect and were once part of the Assiniboine on behalf of John Jacob Assiniboine ranged over greater Yanktonai Sioux, living as one peo­ Astor and his American Fur expanses searching for buffalo and ple with them in the Lake Superior Company. wild plants. Sometimes they traded meat and pelts with sedentary The Assiniboine's vast know­ tribes such as the Hidatsa and ledge of fur trading was of great Mandan on the Missouri River, value to the American Fur receiving in exchange corn, squash, Company. As the dominant tribe in beans, sunflowers, and tobacco. the Confluence area (where the After white traders entered their Yellowstone River enters the domain, the Assiniboine bartered Missouri), they exerted much influ­ furs with both the French and ence and power and contributed to English, receiving guns and other the success of Fort Union's fiir busi­ European trade goods such as brass ness. During the fort's thirty-nine kettles, knives, wool blankets, and years, the Assiniboine were the metal implements. It was the main trading partners; they also Assiniboine who aided white con­ protected the fort and its occu­ tact with the Mandan. In 1738, pants. Fort Union's inhabitants French fur trader and explorer La found them to have a generous Verendrye accompanied an hospitality; they formed great Assiniboine trading party south friendships with the tribe. Many from a post in Manitoba, reaching a Assiniboine women became wives Mandan earthlodge village in cen- of Fort Union personnel, including Bourgeois Edwin Denig who in 1851 married Deer Little Woman; and Clerk (later Bourgeois) Charles Assiniboine Man - Karl Bodmer Larpenteur, who married Makes Cloud Woman. For some of their history, the Assiniboine allied with the Cree against the Blackfeet, who lived fur­ ther west on the Missouri. No mili­ tary post was built to police the Assiniboine and no American troops ever warred against them. Some Assiniboine worked as scouts. In 1885, Assiniboine scouts assisted the Canadian North West Field Force in tracking down the Metis, a group of mixed-blood peo­ ple who rebelled in Canada. Bourgeois Edwin Denig and Wife, SMALLPOX TRAGEDY Deer Little Woman In 1837 tragedy struck the tribes on the Upper Missouri. The American Fur Company steamboat St. Peters arrived at Fort Union, inadvertently carrying an extremely virulent strain of smallpox. The dis­ ease reached the fort as a band of Assiniboine arrived to trade. The traders urged the people not to come, as the fort was a plague post; they paid no heed. Other bands came as well and smallpox spread throughout the tribe. Before the disease the Assiniboine numbered 10,000 people, a number reduced by half with the epidemic. In 1867, the U.S. Army pur­ chased Fort Union, dismantled it, the soldiers have pulled it down to and the Fort Peck Reservation with and used the materials to aid in the build their Fort Buford, where we the Sioux. In Saskatchewan, they construction of Fort Buford. In his are scarcely permitted to enter." share one reserve with the Sioux, memoir, Forty Years a Fur Trader on and another with the Cree and THE ASSINIBOINE the Upper Missouri, Charles Chippewa. A third band resides on TODAY Larpenteur recalled the reaction of two other reserves in The chemistry of the Upper Crazy Bear, a chief of the Saskatchewan. The contributions Missouri had changed. In the 1870s Assiniboine: "We cannot under­ of the Assiniboine to the success of different bands of Assiniboine set­ stand those whites. We had a good Fort Union were many and dare tled on reservations on either side not be overlooked. country, which we always thought of the United States-Canada bor­ they would save for us; they have der. Today in Montana, the given it to our enemies [the Sioux]. Assiniboine share the Fort Belknap Fort Union, the house built for our Reservation with the Gros Ventres, fathers, in the heart of our country,

Fort Union and Distribution of Goods to the Assiniboines - John Mix Stanley