Edwin Thompson Denig | |
---|---|
![]() Denig and second wife | |
Born | Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, US | March 10, 1812
Died | September 4, 1858 46) | (aged
Resting place | Anglican Church Cemetery Headingley, Manitoba [1] |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Fur trader |
Known for | Early ethnographer |
Spouse(s) | Sina Wamniomi (Lakota) Hai-kees-kak-wee-yah (Assiniboine) |
Edwin Thompson Denig (March 10, 1812 – September 4, 1858) was an American fur trader and pioneer ethnographer active at Fort Union, in present-day North Dakota.
Denig was the son of a prosperous county doctor, yet he chose to dedicate his adult life to the fur trade. In 1833 he entered into the service of the American Fur Company as a clerk, first at Fort Pierre, and from 1837 at Fort Union. There he rose from bookkeeper to chief clerk, and finally Bourgeois (superintendent of the post and profit-sharing partner). At Fort Union Denig aided various visiting scholars, including John James Audubon, collected scientific specimens, and also collected diverse specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. [2] [3]
On the initiative of Father De Smet, Denig began in 1851 to write descriptions of Plains Indian culture that later was included in De Smets writings. Denig also assembled data for Henry Schoolcraft, later included in this scholar's writings. A later report by Denig on the Assiniboine was published in 1930 as Indian Tribes of the Missouri. A later manuscript lay dormant in the archives, until it was published in 1961 as Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri. [2] [4]
Denig entered into several "country marriages" with Native American women. His first marriage was to Sina Wamniomi (Whirlwind Blanket), a Lakota, with whom he had a son, Robert, and a daughter, Sarah. His second marriage, in 1837, was with Hai-kees-kak-wee-yah (Deer Little Woman), an Assiniboine, with whom he had one son, Alexander, and two daughters, Ida and Adeline. The first wife stayed at Fort Pierre, but the son was with his father and the second wife at Fort Union. Denig also married the second wife's younger sister in a polygamous union, that eventually ended when the younger sister moved away. The marriage with the second wife was formalized in 1855 through a Catholic ceremony in St. Louis. In 1856 he moved with her and their three children to Selkirk Settlement, where the children were placed in Catholic schools. Denig was here active as an independent fur trader, but died of appendicitis in 1858. [2] [5] [6] [7]
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
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Billy Caldwell, baptized Thomas Caldwell, known also as Sauganash, was a British-Potawatomi fur trader who was commissioned captain in the Indian Department of Canada during the War of 1812. He moved to the United States in 1818 and settled there. In 1829 and 1833, he negotiated treaties on behalf of the United Nations of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi with the United States, and became a leader of a Potawatomi band at Trader's Point. He worked to gain the boundary long promised by the British between white settlers and Indians, but never achieved it.
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people, also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota, are a First Nations/Native American people originally from the Northern Great Plains of North America.
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Crazy Bear (1785–1856) was a chief of the Assiniboine tribes of the northern plains. Their territory included Montana, North Dakota, Alberta and Saskatchewan. He is known as a skilled negotiator with the American Fur Company at Fort Union, North Dakota, and remembered for his participation and representation at the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851—where he was a signatory of the treaty. He earned the name Mah-To-Wit-Ko because he fought like a crazy bear. Wit-Ko is a Siouan word that has multiple translations: crazy, foolish, frightening and mad. Crazy Bear has been recorded by these names and also in French as Ours Fou.
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Fort Lisa (1812–1823) was established in 1812 in what is now North Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska by famed fur trader Manuel Lisa and the Missouri Fur Company, which was based in Saint Louis. The fort was associated with several firsts in Nebraska history: Lisa was the first European farmer in Nebraska; it was the first settlement by American citizens set up in the then-recent Louisiana Purchase; Lisa's wife was the first woman resident of European descent in Nebraska; and the first steamboat to navigate Nebraska waters, the Western Engineer, arrived at Fort Lisa in September 1819.
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Rudolph Friedrich Kurz (1818–1871) was a Swiss painter and writer who traveled to the United States in order to paint and study the Native Americans. He is mostly known on account of his journals, in which he presents an account of and an interesting commentary on life in the mid-19th century along the Mississippi and upper Missouri rivers.
John Canfield Ewers was an American ethnologist and museum curator. Known for his studies on the art and history of the American Plains Indians, he was described by The New York Times as one of his country's "foremost interpreters of American Indian culture."
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Marriage à la façon du pays refers to the practice of common-law marriage between European fur traders and aboriginal or Métis women in the North American fur trade. One historian, Sylvia Van Kirk, suggested these marriages were "the basis for a fur trade society". The practice persisted from the early seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century. It has been suggested that it fell out of practice due to increasing pressures of Catholic ideology and a growing population of non-indigenous women including the new generation of "mixed-breed" daughters who eventually replaced their native mothers as fur traders' wives. Rituals surrounding the marriages were based on a mix of European and, predominantly, Indigenous customs.
Charles Larpenteur (1803-1872) was an American fur trader whose memoir and diary frequently have been used as sources about fur trade history.
Alexander Culbertson (1809–1879), was an American fur trader who founded Fort Benton, Montana, and was a special government agent who played an important role in the negotiations leading to the 1851 treaty of Fort Laramie. Later, Culbertson and his wife Natawista Iksina negotiated with the Blackfoot Confederacy to let the northern Pacific railroad survey of 1853 continue unharmed.
Joseph Marie LaBarge was an American steamboat captain, most notably of the steamboats Yellowstone, and Emilie, that saw service on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, bringing fur traders, miners, goods and supplies up and down these rivers to their destinations. During much of his career LaBarge was in the employ of the American Fur Company, a giant in the fur trading business, before building his own steamboat, the Emilie, to become an independent riverman. During his career he exceeded several existing speed and distance records for steamboats on the Missouri River. Passengers aboard his vessels sometimes included notable people, including Abraham Lincoln. LaBarge routinely offered his steamboat services gratis to Jesuit missionaries throughout his career.