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.

Fur Trade in Iowa, 1818 to 1824 - George Davenport, Russell Farnham, American Fur Company

 

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.

Russell Farnham Explorer Indian Trader

Russell Farnham

George Davenport partnered with Russell Farnham in 1824. He couldn’t have chosen a more qualified person for his growing enterprise. 

John Jacob Astor was the first to capitalize on the Lewis and Clark’s western explorations. He sent two expeditions to the Pacific coast in the summer of 1807. Captain Jonathan Thorn sailed around Cape Horn to the Pacific coast. Astor selected 23-year-old Russell Farnham to lead the cross-country expedition, following Lewis and Clark’s footsteps. Farnham handpicked a crew of seventy frontiersmen and started up the Missouri River to its headwaters. 

 

The expedition wintered at the mouth of the Milk River. When spring came, they pushed on to the Columbia River. By the time Farnham reached his objective in October 1808, just seven men remained of the seventy who started. 

 

Unfortunately, Farnham arrived at the designated meeting place just in time to see the ships sail away. He waited three weeks, hoping they would return for him, then set off on foot across the country to make the return journey. By the time he reached his previous wintering spot on the Milk River, Farnham was the only man left.