Kenneth McKenzie (aka Kenneth MacKenzie) (died 26 April 1861) was nicknamed the "King of the Missouri", for as a fur trader for American Fur Company in the upper Missouri River valley, he controlled a territory larger than most European nations.
Kenneth McKenzie (aka Kenneth MacKenzie) (died 26 April 1861) was nicknamed the "King of the Missouri", for as a fur trader for American Fur Company in the upper Missouri River valley, he controlled a territory larger than most European nations.
McKenzie was a Scot by birth, a Canadian immigrant as a teenager. He became a clerk for the North West Company, learning the fur business. Losing his job when his employer was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, McKenzie traveled to St. Louis in 1822, applied for US citizenship and joined the Columbia Fur Company, heading it by the mid-1820s. While he was at Fort Union he married an Indian woman but later in his life he married a woman named Marry Marshal.
American Fur spent years negotiating, [1] and finally met McKenzie's demands in 1827 to buy Columbia Fur. It was renamed the "Upper Missouri Outfit" division of American Fur, [2] and in 1828, McKenzie went up the river to lead the fur trade, building Fort Union near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
Fort Union was ideally situated to dominate the final years of the beaver pelt trade and the beginning of the buffalo hide trade, and many tribes dealt with McKenzie.
In 1831, McKenzie succeeded in beginning trade with the native Piegan Blackfeet, eventually building Fort McKenzie in their territory as another trading post. [3]
In 1832, 1833, and 1834, Congress passed increasingly restrictive laws to keep alcohol out of the hands of Indians. [4] American Fur was the company most affected by these laws, and they lobbied heavily against it. Alcohol was inexpensive, easy to transport, and something Indians would always trade for.
The company's primary means of transporting furs from and trade goods to their trading posts was by steamboat, and these boats could be inspected at Fort Osage. [5] In order to avoid losing out to foreign traders, McKenzie had the parts shipped to him in 1833 to build a distillery at Fort Union.
Since it was illegal to sell alcohol to Indians, they would give away watered-down whiskey, doctored with tobacco, pepper, molasses, and anything else that would give it a kick, one day, and the next, when they were to commence trading, they would give them a non-alcoholic version.
In August, 1833, a proud McKenzie showed off his still to M. S. Cerré and Nathaniel J. Wyeth. They were outraged at the prices McKenzie was charging for his goods - and the fact that he wouldn't sell them any liquor for their own trade. When the two reached Fort Leavenworth, they reported the still. On June 30, 1834, Congress prohibited distilleries in Indian territory - a law that is still on the books today, although most laws against selling liquor to Indians were repealed in 1948. [4]
The distillery at Fort Union effectively ended the career of the American Fur Company's best field trader, Kenneth McKenzie; he was fired. [6] In 1834, John Jacob Astor retired, and sold the western division of American Fur to Pierre Chouteau, Jr., who had been Astor's St. Louis agent since 1827. [7]
McKenzie spent his last years in Affton, Missouri, as a farmer. He died on April 26, 1861, and was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
Manuel Lisa, also known as Manuel de Lisa, was a Spanish citizen and later, became an American citizen who, while living on the western frontier, became a land owner, merchant, fur trader, United States Indian agent, and explorer. Lisa was among the founders, in St. Louis, of the Missouri Fur Company, an early fur trading company. Manuel Lisa gained respect through his trading among Native American tribes of the upper Missouri River region, such as the Teton Sioux, Omaha and Ponca.
The American Fur Company (AFC) was founded in 1808, by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant to the United States. During the 18th century, furs had become a major commodity in Europe, and North America became a major supplier. Several British companies, most notably the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, were eventual competitors against Astor and capitalized on the lucrative trade in furs. Astor capitalized on anti-British sentiments and his commercial strategies to become one of the first trusts in American business and a major competitor to the British commercial dominance in North American fur trade. Expanding into many former British fur-trapping regions and trade routes, the company grew to monopolize the fur trade in the United States by 1830, and became one of the largest and wealthiest businesses in the country.
Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site is a partial reconstruction of the most important fur trading post on the upper Missouri River from 1829 to 1867. The fort site is about two miles from the confluence of the Missouri River and its tributary, the Yellowstone River, on the Dakota side of the North Dakota/Montana border, 25 miles from Williston, North Dakota.
Fort Kiowa, officially Fort Lookout and also called Fort Brazeau/Brasseaux, was a 19th-century fur trading post located on the Missouri River between modern Chamberlain, South Dakota, and the Big Bend of the Missouri.
The enterprise that eventually came to be known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1822 by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry. Among the original employees, known as "Ashley's Hundred," were Jedediah Smith, who went on to take a leading role in the company's operations, and Jim Bridger, who was among those who bought out Smith and his partners in 1830. It was Bridger and his partners who gave the enterprise the name "Rocky Mountain Fur Company."
Ramsay Crooks was an American fur trader who immigrated to Canada from Greenock, Scotland. He was the father of American Civil War Colonel William Crooks who served in the 6th Minnesota Regiment. In 1803 Ramsay worked in a trading post on the Great Lakes. He helped W. Price Hunt to organize and lead an overland trip to Astoria in the Oregon Country for John Jacob Astor in 1809 through 1813, as a partner in the Pacific Fur Company. He became general manager of the American Fur Company in 1817 and was president of the company from 1834 to 1839. While traveling for the fur trade company he dealt with many Native American tribes. He married Abanokue, the daughter of an Ojibwa Chieftain. They had a daughter together, Hester Crooks. Abanokue died around 1825. Crooks then married Emilie Pratte and had nine children. He spent his final days in New York.
Robert Stuart was a Scottish-born, Canadian and American fur trader, best known as a member of the first European-American party to cross South Pass during an overland expedition from Fort Astoria to Saint Louis in 1811. He was a member of the North West Company (NWC) until recruited by John Jacob Astor to develop the new Pacific Fur Company, which was based at Fort Astoria, on the coast of present-day Oregon. Astor intended the venture to develop a continent-wide commercial empire in fur trading.
Fontenelle's Post, first known as Pilcher's Post, and the site of the later city of Bellevue, was built in 1822 in the Nebraska Territory by Joshua Pilcher, then president of the Missouri Fur Company. Located on the west side of the Missouri River, it developed as one of the first European-American settlements in Nebraska. The Post served as a center for trading with local Omaha, Otoe, Missouri, and Pawnee tribes.
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.
Pierre Chouteau Jr., also referred to as Pierre Cadet Chouteau, was an American merchant and a member of the wealthy Chouteau fur-trading family of Saint Louis, Missouri.
Wilson Price Hunt was an early pioneer and explorer of the Oregon Country in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Employed as an agent in the fur trade under John Jacob Astor, Hunt organized and led the greater part of a group of about 60 men on an overland expedition to establish a fur trading outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River. The Astorians, as they have become known, were the first major party to cross to the Pacific after the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Russel Farnham was an American frontiersman, explorer, and fur trader. An agent of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, he oversaw fur trading in the Great Lakes region throughout the 1810s and 1820s. A member of the Pacific Fur Company headed by Wilson P. Hunt during 1810–1812, he is also the first American to semi-circumnavigate the world traveling by foot from Fort Astoria to St. Petersburg, Russia, to New York City.
The Missouri Fur Company was one of the earliest fur trading companies in St. Louis, Missouri. Dissolved and reorganized several times, it operated under various names from 1809 until its final dissolution in 1830. It was created by a group of fur traders and merchants from St. Louis and Kaskaskia, Illinois, including Manuel Lisa and members of the Chouteau family. Its expeditions explored the upper Missouri River and traded with a variety of Native American tribes, and it acted as the prototype for fur trading companies along the Missouri River until the 1820s.
The fur trade in Montana was a major period in the area's economic history from about 1800 to the 1850s. It also represents the initial meeting of cultures between indigenous peoples and those of European ancestry. British and Canadian traders approached the area from the north and northeast focusing on trading with the indigenous people, who often did the trapping of beavers and other animals themselves. American traders moved gradually up the Missouri River seeking to beat British and Canadian traders to the profitable Upper Missouri River region.
Charles Larpenteur (1803-1872) was an American fur trader whose memoir and diary frequently have been used as sources about fur trade history.
Columbia Fur Company was a fur trading and Indian trading business active from 1821 to 1827, in Michigan Territory and in the unorganized territory of the United States. It then became the Upper Missouri Outfit of the American Fur Company.
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.
The Spread Eagle was a steam-driven sidewheel riverboat that transported passengers, goods and supplies to the forts and trading posts along the Missouri River between 1857–1864. It was constructed and launched at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. The vessel was a wooden hull packet, 210 feet (64 m) long, with a beam of 36 feet (11 m), a draft of 6 feet (1.8 m), and was rated at 389 tons. It was powered by two steam engines with 3 boilers each, at 40 inches (1,000 mm) in diameter and 24 feet (7.3 m) in length. The Spread Eagle was constructed by Captain Benjamin Johnson who sold the vessel to the American Fur Company upon her arrival at Saint Louis, Missouri. Commanded by captain Bailey, she was once engaged in a race along the Missouri from St. Louis to Fort Benton where she rammed her opponent.
The United States Government Fur Trade Factory System was a system of government non-profit trading with Native Americans that existed between 1795 and 1821.
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