Fur Traders And Their Posts In The Iowa Country After 1824

 

Sac and Fox hunters trapping beaver along an Iowa stream

By the 1820s, the fur trade was everywhere in the Iowa country. Rivers turned into highways. Canoes, keelboats, and trading boats traveled up and down the Mississippi carrying furs, lead, whiskey, blankets, traps, and trade goods.

Money drove everything. Beaver pelts. Otter skins. Deer hides. Muskrat. Lead from the Dubuque mines. Traders hauled it south to St. Louis where fortunes could be made fast. Some men got rich. Plenty more went broke trying.

George Davenport became one of the biggest traders on the Upper Mississippi. He built posts across eastern Iowa and traveled from village to village, buying furs from Native hunters. Russell Farnham worked the same country for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. By the mid-1820s, Astor’s company took over many of its smaller competitors.

The Sac, Fox, Sioux, Winnebago, and Ioway were the key players in the Iowa country. Hunting grounds mattered. So did old rivalries. When tribes went to war, traders lost money. Camps emptied. Hunting parties disappeared. Rumors could wreck an entire season.

The government tried to control trade with licenses, rules, and designated trading posts. On paper, it sounded good. On the frontier, it was chaos. Traders ignored regulations when profits were involved. Whiskey smuggling was constant despite federal laws banning liquor in Indian country.

By the middle of the decade the Iowa country had become part of a huge fur empire stretching from isolated hunting camps to the crowded riverfront warehouses of St. Louis. It was a rough business filled with competition, long travel, dangerous winters, and a steady fight for money and control.

Trading with Native Americans in the early 1800s

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.

Licensed traders and their posts in the Iowa country after 1824

War between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes no doubt decreased [John Jacob] Astor’s profits from the fur trade at this time. Then in May, 1824, on top of the bad condition of the fur market, came a blow in the shape of adverse legislation by Congress: henceforth it became “the duty of Indian agents to designate, from time to time, certain convenient and suitable places for carrying on trade with the different Indian tribes, and to require all traders to trade at the places thus designated, and at no other place or places.” The new law required traders to cease sending out “runners to secure credits and follow the hunters to their places of chase.”

After their return from a visit to their Great Father at Washington, D.C., where differences with the government were satisfactorily patched up, the principal Sac and Fox chiefs frequently visited Thomas Forsyth, Indian Agent at Fort Armstrong. On the 27th of September they called on him again and complained because “they understood that their Traders are not to be allowed to go into the Interior of their country to receive their pay in Skins for Credits given them in goods by the Traders in the fall of the year.”

The Sacs and Foxes had been long accustomed to receive goods on credit from traders every autumn before they started out on their hunts, and so they now declared that without credit “they cannot hunt to maintain their wives and children, that the game is now far distant from the Mississippi and it is impossible for them to travel a distance of from one to two or three hundred miles for a little gun powder or any other articles they might want and more particularly in the winter season while the Snow is on the ground, or in the months of February and March when they ought to be hunting bear, beaver and otters.”

They complained that they had “not a sufficiency of horses to carry all their families and baggages into the country they mean to hunt.” “How then can it be expected,” they asked, “that we can bring out of the interior of the country in the spring of the year all our packs of skins, tallow and jerked meat?” The latter articles, with corn, comprised their food during the summer season, and without them, they said, their “old people in particular must Starve and should our traders refuse us credits, what then is to become of us?”

Sac and Fox chiefs, therefore, asked Forsyth to write to the president and request him to allow traders to visit their hunting camps to bring goods and receive payments.

Forsyth accordingly placed the matter before John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, declaring that “if ever the traders refuse to give the Sauk and Fox Indians credit of arms, ammunition, axes, traps and some blankets and strouds, the Indians must literally starve, as they cannot commence their hunt & support their families without a credit from the traders every fall.”

Keelboats transporting goods downriver to St. Louis

Between June 5 and October 11, 1824, Thomas Forsyth granted licenses to several traders, among them Russell Farnham at the Flint Hills, now perhaps the site of Burlington; Maurice Blondeau“ at the Dirt lodge high up the River de Moine;” David G. Bates and Amos Farrar at the Galena River in northern Illinois; and George Davenport at “Rocky Island.” All were licensed to trade with Sacs and Foxes. Forsyth also reported that “the distance from the Raccoon Fork of River de Moine to the Flint Hills is great, and too far for an Indian to leave his hunt to travel for any small article he may want for the use of his family. This is the reason I granted a licence to trade at the Dirt Lodge on River de Moine.”

The posts of Bates and Farrar at the lead miners’ settlement on the Galena River were the permanent resort of the Fox Indians who still had a village and worked the lead mines on the west side of the Mississippi, and so they undoubtedly disposed of much of their lead ore on the Illinois side. Sac Indians also traded here. On account of his central location, George Davenport on Rock Island traded with several nations: Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, and other tribes, and his summer trade with the natives of the Iowa country was especially large. Russell Farnham at Flint Hills also drew business from the Sacs and Foxes, “as they generally mingle together in their hunting excursions, but as there are more Sauks than Foxes who trade at the Flint Hills, this place may be considered as a permanent place of trade for the Sauk Indians.”

Maurice Blondeau’s trade at the Dirt Lodge upon the Raccoon River was exactly what the Sacs and Foxes had demanded: this temporary post was near their hunting country and during the hunting season was always accessible. Forsyth pointed out in his report that the traders at Flint Hills and Dirt Lodge carried on business “from the months of September to April only, there being no traders at those places during the summer months.” Very few Indians visited Rock Island during the winter, except to trade a little or “to procure some corn from their cashes [caches] for their family use.”

The Sioux Indians who occupied northeastern Iowa at this time seem not to have had a trader among them. Nicolas Boilvin, Indian Agent at Prairie du Chien, reported in December 1824 that no applications had been made to him for licenses to trade. Owing to ill health, he was then sojourning at St. Louis: he presumed that Colonel Morgan had granted licenses for trade at three different places which he named, among them a site now occupied by the town of Trempealeau, Wisconsin. He recommended this place in preference to the Sioux village on the Upper Iowa River because other tribes stopped there and Wabasha’s band of Sioux could conveniently resort thither for their goods, and because firewood was abundant. As late as 1831, a trading-post existed here.

Forsyth, who spent the winter at St. Louis, returned to his agency on Rock Island about the middle of April 1825. A few days later he reported that very many Sacs and Foxes had not yet arrived at their villages, “particularly the beaver hunters among whom are some of the principal chiefs.” He declared it “truly lamentable that the white people will continue to sell such quantities of whisky to Indians. A Sauk Chief told me yesterday that as fast as one cargo of whisky was finished another arrived and when the Indians would be done drinking, he said he could not tell.”

Forsyth’s chief complaint, borne to William Clark at St. Louis by George Davenport (who was probably the person financially interested), was that the Indian Agent at Prairie du Chien had granted a license to Etienne Dubois, a clerk of Joseph Rolette, permitting him to trade with the Indians between Dubuque’s mines and Prairie du Chien. Forsyth hoped “that the business of one agent giving Licenses to people to trade within the agency of another may be remedied.” Many persons had applied to him for permits to trade with the Foxes at Dubuque’s mines but without avail because the Galena River traders were deemed easily accessible and sufficient for the purpose. Farrar, Davenport’s agent in that locality, must have lost much lead by reason of the competition; hence the importance of preventing it the coming summer.

Fur traders often traversed the wilderness on snowshoes to reach distat tribes

On May 31, 1825, Forsyth reported to General Clark that there had been no traders at the Dirt Lodge or Flint Hills since the spring trade came to an end, and what little summer trade there might be would center at Rock Island and at the Galena River “with the exception of that part, that may and no doubt will be (in the course of next summer) traded in the settlements of Illinois and Missouri for whisky.” Bates, Davenport, and Farrar were still at their posts, while Farnham and Blondeau were presumed to be at St. Louis, unwilling to seek the summer’s deerskin trade of the Indians because it would not justify the expense of collection.

In September 1825, Forsyth granted a year’s license to Etienne Dubois upon the request of the Fox chiefs to be allowed to have a trader “at a little Prairie on an Island which is opposite to the Little Macoketey [Maquoketa] River.” About the same time he granted licenses to André St. Amond and Jean Baptiste Caron to carry on trade at the Dirt Lodge and Flint Hills, and the latter also at the Fever (Galena) River. The Indian Agent at Fort Snelling in the Minnesota country also gave permits to Joseph Montraville and Joseph Laframboise to set up a post at “Fort Confederation, on the Second Forks of the Des Moines River” for trade with the Yankton Sioux. This “fort,” probably just a temporary stockade for Indian trade, most likely stood at the junction of the upper branches of the Des Moines in the present Humboldt County where the Yanktons hunted. Nothing more seems to be known of the fort, except that traders frequented the region in later years.

The treaty of 1825 with the Teton, Yankton, and Yanktonies bands of Sioux Indians provided that all trade and intercourse with them should be transacted at such place or places as might be designated and pointed out by the President of the United States, and none but American citizens duly authorized should be admitted to trade. The Yanktons, a very warlike tribe, agreed to extend protection to the persons and property of the traders and the persons legally employed under them, and if any foreigner or other person, not legally authorized, should come into their district or country for trade or other purposes, they would seize and deliver them to a United States superintendent or agent of Indian affairs or to the nearest military post. This treaty was proclaimed to be law in February 1826, though traders with merchandise had appeared on the ground even sooner.

During the year 1825 Indian traders received what proved to be a form of encouragement from the government: United States commissioners counseled with the chiefs and warriors of the Sioux, the Sacs and Foxes, and the Ioways who had for several years been sending war parties against one another. At Prairie du Chien, in August, a boundary line was established between the hostile tribes in the northern Iowa country with the understanding that neither nation would encroach upon the other’s hunting grounds. With a “perpetual” peace thus effected, traders could hope for larger quantities of furs. But later hostilities somewhat blasted their hopes for bigger profits. Then, too, the Winnebagoes of Illinois were growing more and more restless and unfriendly toward the whites. Early in 1826, they invaded what is now northeastern Iowa and massacred a half-breed named Francis Methode and his wife and children. The murdered family had pitched their camp upon the Yellow River to make sugar, and upon a failure to return to Prairie du Chien, some army officers with a force of soldiers from Fort Crawford went on a search and found their dead bodies. Twelve Winnebagoes were later jailed for this offence.

Etienne Dubois, Joseph Rolette’s agent for the American Fur Company, continued his licensed trade with the Foxes at the Dubuque mines until the autumn of 1828, operating upon the “Little Macquackity” for the years 1829 to 1830. George Davenport who had prosecuted the fur trade for ten years as an independent, refusing to be crushed by his great competitor, at length fell a victim to Astor’s pocket-book in the fall of 1826. At that time Mr. Bostwick, a partner in the firm of David Stone and Company, which had been “admitted” to the American Fur Company in 1823, came to Rock Island and bought Davenport into the growing monopoly. By the new arrangement Davenport received the management of the company’s trade from the mouth of the Iowa River to the Turkey River; Russell Farnham had charge of the Indian country south of the Iowa River with his main depot at Fort Edwards; and Joseph Rolette was appointed to buy up furs north of the Turkey River with a depot at Prairie du Chien. River traffic at this time was still largely confined to keel-boats, due to the obstructions to steamboat navigation.

Beginning in August 1826, Farnham traded at the Dirt Lodge in competition, it seems, with Francis Labussierre, at Flint Hills in competition with M. S. Cerre, and at Fort Armstrong until August 1827. Ramsay Crooks, writing from St. Louis in April 1827, warned Astor that the season was going to be bad and declared:

“Farnham’s Indians from whom much was expected this Spring, appear to have been panic-struck by report of warlike demonstrations on the part of their northern neighbors the Sioux, and have abandoned their fine beaver country without attempting to catch a single animal. This is the most to be regretted, as the rumors were unfounded, and the season has been uncommonly favorable for a beaver hunt which would have given us at least 3000 more of the article than we shall have.”

On the 30th of April, Crooks wrote a letter from the steamboat “Indiana”, seventy-five miles below Prairie du Chien, informing Mr. Astor that though he had seen something more of Farnham’s affairs, he could say nothing in favor of his prospects and was “sorry to add that the result of Mr. Rolette’s trade is likely to be similar.” Crooks later confirmed the poverty of Farnham’s business.

After the year 1827, Farnham was succeeded by Pierre Chouteau, Jr., who appears to have served the American Fur Company at these places until November 1830. Farnham then resumed control, being succeeded by John Forsyth in September 1831. The latter also had a station on “Little Prairie” opposite the Little Maquoketa River. After becoming a stockholder in the American Fur Company, George Davenport left his frontier home to visit his birthplace in England after an absence of twenty-three years, returning in May 1828. During his absence William Downey traded at the island opposite the Maquoketa River and also at the Dirt Lodge. Joseph Laframboise met the hunters of the Yankton Sioux at the second fork of the Des Moines from 1825 to 1827, part of the time in competition with Wright Prescott, resumed his trade here for the years 1829–1831, and took out a license again in 1833 for one year’s trade upon “Crooked River near Des Moines,” while Alexander Faribault was stationed at the upper forks. In the autumn of 1833, licenses were also issued to the American Fur Company, employing ten men, and Michael Tisson with four men for trade with the Sacs and Foxes at the Dirt Lodge on the Des Moines.

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.

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