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| George Davenport |
In
the early 1800s, the fur trade exploded across the Iowa country. Rivers became
highways. Canoes, keelboats, and trading boats moved along the Mississippi.
Furs meant money. Beaver. Otter.
Muskrat. Deer hides. Lead from the Dubuque mines. Everything got packed onto
boats and shipped south to St. Louis.
George Davenport was one of the
biggest traders in the region. He built trading posts across eastern Iowa and
traveled from camp to camp, buying furs from Native hunters. Sometimes on
horseback. Sometimes by canoe. Sometimes on foot. It just depended on the
season.
Russell Farnham worked the region for
John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. Astor’s company was growing fast by
the 1820s. Bigger than almost everyone else. The company pushed into the Upper
Mississippi Valley and slowly crushed smaller traders.
The Sac, Fox, Sioux, Winnebago, and
Ioway tribes were all part of the trade. Hunting grounds mattered. Trade routes
mattered. Wars between tribes could wreck business fast.
Government officials tried to control
trade with licenses and laws, but it didn’t work very well. Whiskey smuggling
was everywhere. Traders ignored the rules when money was involved.
By the mid-1820s, the fur trade had turned the Iowa country into a rough, busy frontier tied to a huge business network stretching from the northern wilderness to St. Louis.
The
following passage was taken from “Fur Trade Operations in the Eastern Iowa
Country, 1800 to 1833,” by Jacob Van Der Zee. It was published in The Iowa
Journal of History and Politics, October 1914.
Fur
Trade in Iowa, 1818-1824
During
the summer months of 1818, hostilities commenced between the Sioux and the Sacs
and Foxes. In July and August the allied tribes went on the warpath, killed
forty Sioux of “the River de moins,” and brought about thirty women and
children as prisoners to Prairie du Chien. The Sioux had great difficulty in
getting their relatives back. These sallies into one another’s country were
destined to continue intermittently for at least a dozen years, and traders
soon discovered that their business suffered. They perceived the advantage of
keeping peace among the tribes: war parties meant poor hunts and economic
waste. Traders accordingly made every effort to obtain a voice in the Indian
councils of war.
Some
time during the year 1818, George Davenport abandoned his position as purveyor
to the garrison on Rock Island and turned all his attention to the Indian
trade. The commandant at Fort Armstrong permitted him to erect a log cabin.
Davenport procured a stock of goods at St. Louis and brought them home in a
keel-boat. Having traded mainly with the Winnebagoes, he now began to compete
with American Fur Company agents for the trade of the Sacs and Foxes. During
the winter he traversed the Iowa prairies, visited the hunting camps, and got his
pick of the furs. For many years, in the spring, “he would have all his furs
and skins nicely packed and prepared—feathers all sacked, bees-wax and deers
tallow all barreled—then would load his boat, and go to St. Louis, and sell his
cargo, which always commanded the highest market price, owing to the good
condition in which everything was put up.” He often brought goods to the Sacs
and Foxes who worked the Galena River and Dubuque mines, obtaining from them
very valuable quantities of lead in return.
Private
traders gradually tightened their hold upon the commerce of the upper country.
Bent upon supplying either the goods or the peddlers for this trade, the
American Fur Company kept its fingers upon the pulse of Congress and informed
its champion at Washington of all facts which might aid in the fight against
the factory system. A new license law up for discussion in Congress early in
1820 so outraged Ramsay Crooks that he wrote at once to a friend at the capital
city urging him to spare no efforts on the company’s behalf. Powerful interests
were at work all during the three sessions of Congress in 1820, 1821, and 1822:
the factory system was on trial and was getting more and more entangled in the
meshes laid by the American Fur Company. In 1820, Secretary of War John C.
Calhoun sent Rev. Jedediah Morse to make a tour in the West and report on trade
conditions among the tribes. This philanthropist obtained his information of
the Iowa country through Major Marston of Fort Armstrong: government goods were
declared to be of such bad quality that the Sacs and Foxes believed their
“Great Father” had sent them out as presents and, therefore, that the factors
were trying to cheat them by trading articles never intended for sale.
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| Russell Farnham |
Five thousand Sacs and Foxes were said to be dwelling upon the banks of the Mississippi at this time: two Sac villages at the mouths of the Rock and the Des Moines rivers in Illinois, and three Fox villages in the Iowa country. Thirty-five lodges of Foxes stood opposite Fort Armstrong, twenty lodges at Dubuque’s lead mines, and ten near the mouth of the Wapsipinicon River. During the trade year of 1819-1820, they had five traders who employed nine clerks and interpreters with annual salaries ranging from $200 to $1200, and forty-three common laborers whose individual wages amounted to from $100 to $200 per year. These traders secured from the Indians in the very shadow of the walls of the government trading-house at Fort Edwards 980 packs of all sorts of furs and peltries valued at $58,800. The tribesmen who did not hunt (their chief game resort was the Iowa country) dug and smelted from four to five hundred thousand pounds of lead per season, and also made mats. The Ioways at that time had villages on the Des Moines and Grand rivers and sometimes visited Fort Osage.
Among
the men known to carry on a thriving business with the natives were George
Davenport, Dr. Samuel Muir, and Maurice Blondeau. The first had set up several
posts for the Indian trade, as stated above. Muir commenced trade somewhat
later, with his place of business on an island opposite Dubuque’s lead mines,
while Blondeau seems to have maintained a trading-house above the mouth of the
Des Moines River during practically all of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century. Whether any of these traders received his goods for the traffic from
the American Fur Company is uncertain, but during the two years 1821 and 1822
Russell Farnham appeared in this region as the company’s agent, while Joseph La
Perche St. Jean came to sell the company’s goods at his own risk one year and
as agent the next. At the same time, Joseph Rolette served as Astor’s
representative on the Upper Mississippi. For many years he had pursued the
trade as an independent and had attained such success and influence with the
Indians and frontiersmen that he came to be called “King Rolette.” Astor,
therefore, induced him to become a member of the American Fur Company.
Morse’s
report on the Indian trade was adverse to the government. Thomas Hart Benton of
Missouri, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and Astor’s
attorney in a damage suit then pending, at once made prodigious efforts to wipe
out the last vestiges of the factory system: he sent queries to many
influential men of experience in Indian affairs. Benjamin O’Fallon, writing
from a fifteen years’ acquaintance with factory operations at Fort Madison and
Fort Crawford, declared that the government’s goods were inferior to those of
private traders and poorly adapted to the Indian trade. Astonishing as it may
seem, Benton had the audacity to bolster up his attack on the government system
with information obtained from Ramsay Crooks of Mackinac, John Jacob Astor’s right-hand
man in the West. Crooks ridiculed the quality of blankets and dry goods sold by
government factors who were called “D-d Yankee pedlars,” and remarked: “While
England’s King, by unanimous consent, received from the Indians the appellation
of Father, the President of the United States was degraded to the level of a
common adventurer.”
Crooks
could see no benefits, either material or moral, in the system, declaring:
“The
foregoing facts and observations attest most fully the positive inefficiency of
the system in conciliating the Indians; for, at Fort Wayne, Chicago and Fort
Madison, previous to the war, public trade was in full operation, and
flourished, I believe, beyond anything we have seen in these latter days; and
yet, so far from ‘reclaiming them from savage habits,’ they did not in a single
instance, during the whole contest, avert the dreadful effects of an irruption
into our defenseless frontier; nor did they even disarm the savage of one
particle of his natural ferocity.”
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| John Jacob Astor |
Cheered by Morse’s adverse report, encouraged by the support of prominent men in the West, and championed by Benton in the Senate, the American Fur Company effected the collapse of the government system: an act of Congress called for its entire abolition on June 3rd, 1822. Thus square dealing by the government was to be replaced by the private trader’s rapacious system of exploitation by means of credit and whisky. The latter was to be subject, however, to the provisions of a new law also passed at this time. Henceforth, all persons who wished to engage in traffic with the natives were under the necessity of giving bonds and applying to an authorized Indian Agent of the government for licenses. Indian Agents were at once informed of the new regulations and were asked to report all licenses granted before the 1st of September of each year.
Among
the three tribes of Indians who were still entitled to public trading-houses by
virtue of treaty provisions were the Sacs and Foxes. In compliance with an
order of the War Department, Thomas Forsyth, Indian Agent at Fort Armstrong,
summoned the tribal chiefs and warriors to a council upon Rock Island and on
the 3rd of September, 1822, effected an arrangement whereby they agreed (in the
presence of George Davenport, Samuel Muir, and John Connolly as witnesses) for
the sum of $1000 worth of merchandise to release the government from its treaty
obligation. The government stores at Fort Edward and Crawford were closed up,
and in the future the Indians were to depend upon private traders for their
merchandise. It must be remembered that the American Fur Company had not yet
generally sent agents with goods into the Indian country at the company’s own
risk: it merely outfitted private traders on their own account, “charging them
the highest market price for goods, and taking over their furs at rates that
made due allowance for possible declining values.”
In
the spring of 1822, the American Fur Company established its western department
at St. Louis to push forward the Missouri River trade with a vengeance. The
commerce with tribes on that vast stream had been largely in the hands of
Berthold, Chouteau and Company. Astor had refrained from competing with them
because he had supplied them with goods for the trade, but when the rising firm
of David Stone and Company threatened to drive Astor’s customers and
Mississippi outposts out of business, the American Fur Company at once set up a
branch office and store at St. Louis. For the first year, Ramsay Crooks
proposed merely to supply our lower Mississippi and Illinois river outfits from
St. Louis, and tamper with the Missouri traders on a moderate scale, in order
to secure them for the following year.
Astor’s
enterprise, under the control of his faithful lieutenants Ramsay Crooks at
Mackinac and Samuel Abbott at St. Louis now made itself felt among all the
independent traders of the West. Having pushed government factories to the
wall, Astor now proceeded to grind smaller competitors out of existence, and
gradually the infant industry of John Jacob Astor grew into the first American
monopoly: small dealers were soon forced to enlist under its banners, though
many unscrupulous ones continued to keep their heads above water.
One
government record of licenses granted in 1822 shows that several men traded
with the Indian tribes of the Upper Mississippi: Dennis Robinson, Hasen Moore,
Augustin Rock, Edward Pesanne, J. B. Moirand, and Joseph Laframboise. They must
have confined operations to the country north of Prairie du Chien, for during
this same trade year of 1822-1823 Russell Farnham, Maurice Blondeau, Joshua
Palen, Francis Laboussiere, John St. Hogel, and Joseph Laparche bought furs
upon the Mississippi’s “tributary waters below Prairie du Chien.” John
Campbell, Joshua Palen, and Maurice Blondeau traded at the Ioway, Sac, and Fox
towns upon the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers, and William Donney held a
two-year license to trade with the same tribes at Fort Armstrong. These Indians
seem to have hunted as far west as the Missouri River region where they traded
with Vance M. Campbell and Chouteau, Berthold and Pratt. Other important
traders with these natives were Samuel C. Muir, George Davenport, and Francis
Yostie, while Amos Farrar catered to the Sacs, Foxes, and Winnebagoes. Etienne
Dubois supplied the Foxes, no doubt at the village in the old Dubuque lead
district.
Of
the traders named above, Maurice Blondeau and Russell Farnham were doubtless
working for the Astor Corporation. George Davenport, it is said, maintained
trading houses at the Flint Hills and the mouths of the Iowa, Wapsipinicon, and
Maquoketa rivers, as well as three posts on the Rock River and another in
charge of Amos Farrar on the Galena River in Illinois. To attend to all these
stores and keep them supplied with goods, Davenport was compelled to travel
from one to the other, “sometimes on foot, sometimes in a canoe, and sometimes
on horse-back.” At his principal depot on Rock Island, he collected all furs
and peltries and made up outfits of merchandise to be sent to different parts
of the Indian country.
Nicolas
Boilvin, Indian Agent at Fort Crawford, on July 18, 1822, wrote to Lewis Cass
with regard to preventing the Indians from visiting the English at Malden,
Drummond Island, or other Canadian settlements for their annual presents of
goods. He reported that he had assembled them in council and explained to them
the displeasure of their Great Father, the President. He also sent word to all
the Sacs and Foxes “from the River aux Moines to the Sioux Nation as high as
possible;” and he believed that since the savages were continually at war with
one another, they would not go to British traders at Malden, except “May be a
few Socks, Foxes, Ossages, Ayoways.”
Whisky
continued to find its way to the Indians, not through traders so much as
through persons who did not take out licenses for the trade at all. The former
were prohibited by law from introducing liquor into the Indian country, but
unlicensed persons were not affected by the letter of the law and accordingly
escaped its operation. In November 1822, Lieutenant Colonel Morgan, commandant
at Fort Crawford, reported that he had caused the boats of all traders who
passed his post to be searched to prevent ardent spirits from being carried to
the Indians. He recommended that the best places for carrying the law into
effect were Green Bay and Fort Armstrong, where the Indian traders first
entered the Indian country. But he noted “the melancholy truth, that no law or regulation
will be sufficient to prevent the Indians residing immediately on our borders,
from obtaining ardent spirits in any quantities they may desire.” He said he
did not feel authorized to check the liquor traffic at the lead mines on the
Galena River to which the Sacs and Foxes were resorting.
In
January, 1823, Nicolas Boilvin wrote: “Peace and Harmony now exists with the
Indians, altho’ large war parties are on Contemplation between the Sacs and
Foxes on one part and the Siouxs’ of the plains on the other part for Next
Spring. Unless the Government thinks proper to interfere, I am afraid it will
be severe for those poor ignorant Savages—and no doubt some other tribes will
be the Theatre of warfare and no doubt that Commerce will be injured and Some
poor innocent people the victim”. He would obviate the evil as much as
possible, but money was needed to that end. “It even requires in Speaking to
the Indians Tobacco, Powder etc. and a few Blankets to Convey any weight with
advice given them.”
J.
H. Lockwood appears to have been one of the traders doing business upon the
Mississippi in 1823, though he was not licensed by the government. In April he
wrote that his outfit among the Foxes had done well and that he expected to
make a few packs at Prairie du Chien. He feared there might be something in the
rumor that the American Fur Company would beat him to a good many packs in the
Mississippi country. Government agents granted year licenses to Jean B. Caron
for trade with the Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Ioways, and to Russell Farnham
and Charles Fabvre for trade with the Sacs, Foxes, and Ioways. George Davenport
was licensed to do business with the Sacs, Foxes, and Winnebagoes, while
Antoine Brisbois received permission to trade upon the “Rivière au Pomme”,
which is no doubt the old French name for the Wapsipinicon River. In the months
of January and March 1824, licenses were issued to B. Vasquez and St. Armant to
trade at the Sac and Fox hunting grounds, while Joseph Dechamp and Edward
Ploudre were to operate upon the “Raccoon River.”
Astor’s
enterprise upon the Missouri and the Mississippi with St. Louis as a base of
operations was now beginning to assume vast proportions. St. Louis, with its
7000 people was the metropolis of the Middle West: its location near the
junction of the largest waterways of North America made it an important
transportation and trade center. From here was distributed merchandise for the
traders north and west in exchange for furs and peltries, and from here
provisions were sent to all the government forts and all settlements in the
Valley, while the world’s products were imported by way of New Orleans or the
Ohio River. Steamboats were already plying the Missouri and the Mississippi as
far north as the Des Moines Rapids, where obstructions prevented all but
keel-boats and lighter craft from ascending.
For
some years goods had been conveyed beyond the rapids of the Mississippi in
small watercraft, but the spring of 1823 marks a revolution in river traffic:
the steamboat “Virginia” made a journey in high water as far north as Fort St.
Anthony (Snelling) and supplied the post with provisions.
An
eminent foreigner, J. C. Beltrami, recorded his impressions of the Indian
trade. At Fort Edwards he found a temporary encampment of Sac Indians bartering
with traders of “the South-west Company.” This would suggest that the new name
of Astor’s company was kept in the dark, perhaps for advertising purposes. In
the Iowa country Beltrami noted no other traces of civilization than a few
scattered huts belonging perhaps to men then trading on the present sites of
Keokuk and Montrose, opposite the rapids and below the ruins of Fort Madison.
Beltrami
asserted that the American Fur Company then almost monopolized the commerce of
the West. The Foxes at Dubuque’s old lead mines smelted and traded lead for the
goods of the traders. Prairie du Chien was then a considerable entrepôt,
situated as it was upon the principal trade route between the Upper Mississippi
country and Canada and New York. At this frontier village, the tourist received
many civilities from Joseph Rolette, one of the principals of the American Fur
Company, and later from other agents at Fort Snelling.
Before You Go
Stuff like this is what
I always end up chasing—the little lines in old newspapers and magazines, the
parts most books skip over.
I pulled a bunch of those stories together into Iowa Crime Time if
you want more of it.
And if you just like reading this kind of thing, Buy me a
Big Gulp / Support Retro
Iowa
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