Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839
Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839

Author: Francis A. Chardon

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9780803263758

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Thirty years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota, the Upper Missouri River region was being plied by fur traders. In 1834 Francis A. Chardon, a Philadelphian of French extraction, took charge of Fort Clark, a main post of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri. The journal that Chardon began that year offers a rare glimpse of daily life among the Mandan Indians, including the Arikaras, Yanktons, and Gros Ventres. In particular, it is a valuable and graphic record of the smallpox scourge that nearly destroyed the Mandans in 1837. Chardon describes much of historical interest, including such figures as the interpreter Charbonneau, Sacajawea's husband, and the fantastic James Dickson, "Liberator of all the Indians." By the time his account ends in 1839, the fur trade is already in decline. Chardon's journal was long lost, rediscovered, and finally edited and published in 1932 by Annie Heloise Abel, a distinguished scholar whose works, all available as Bison Books, included The American Indian As Slaveholder and Secessionist; The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865; and The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866. Her historical introduction provides background on the fur trade and on Chardon's life before and after his tenure at Fort Clark. William R. Swagerty is a history professor at the University of Idaho.

The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839–1846
The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839–1846

Author: Kenneth E. Lewis

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2019-03-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1628953594

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The late antebellum period saw the dramatic growth of the United States as Euro-American settlement began to move into new territories west of the Mississippi River. The journals and letters of businessmen Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, written between 1839 and 1846, provide a unique perspective into a time of dramatic expansion in the Great Lakes and beyond. These accounts describe the daily experiences of Nehemiah and his wife Nancy Shelton Sanford as they traveled west from their Connecticut home to examine lands for speculation in regions undergoing colonization, as well as the experiences of their son Henry who later came out to the family’s western property. Beyond an interest in business, the Sanfords’ journals provide a detailed picture of the people they encountered and the settlements and country through which they passed and include descriptions of events, activities, methods of travel and travel accommodations, as well as mining in the upper Mississippi Valley and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a buffalo hunt on the Great Plains. Through their travels the Sanfords give us an intimate glimpse of the immigrants, settlers, Native Americans, missionaries, traders, mariners, and soldiers they encountered, and their accounts illuminate the lives and activities of the newcomers and native people who inhabited this fascinating region during a time of dramatic transition.

Fort Clark and Its Indian Neighbors
Fort Clark and Its Indian Neighbors

Author: W. Raymond Wood

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0806150440

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A thriving fur trade post between 1830 and 1860, Fort Clark, in what is today western North Dakota, also served as a way station for artists, scientists, missionaries, soldiers, and other western chroniclers traveling along the Upper Missouri River. The written and visual legacies of these visitors—among them the German prince-explorer Maximilian of Wied, Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, and American painter-author George Catlin—have long been the primary sources of information on the cultures of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, the peoples who met the first fur traders in the area. This book, by a team of anthropologists, is the first thorough account of the fur trade at Fort Clark to integrate new archaeological evidence with the historical record. The Mandans built a village in about 1822 near the site of what would become Fort Clark; after the 1837 smallpox epidemic that decimated them, the village was occupied by Arikaras until they abandoned it in 1862. Because it has never been plowed, the site of Fort Clark and the adjacent Mandan/Arikara village are rich in archaeological information. The authors describe the environmental and cultural setting of the fort (named after William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition), including the social profile of the fur traders who lived there. They also chronicle the histories of the Mandans and the Arikaras before and during the occupation of the post and the village. The authors conclude by assessing the results—published here for the first time—of the archaeological program that investigated the fort and adjacent Indian villages at Fort Clark State Historic Site. By vividly depicting the conflict and cooperation in and around the fort, this book reveals the various cultures’ interdependence.

Between the Floods
Between the Floods

Author: Mark van de Logt

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2023-03-16

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 0806192577

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The creation story of the Sahniš, or Arikara, people begins with a terrible flood, sent by the Great Chief Above to renew the world. Many generations later, another devastating flood nearly destroyed the Arikaras when the newly built Garrison Dam swamped the fertile land of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Between the Floods tells the story of this powerful Great Plains nation from its mythic origins to the modern era, tracing the path of the Arikaras through the oral traditions and oral histories that preserve and illuminate their past. The Arikaras, like their Hidatsa and Mandan neighbors on the northern plains, lived as both farmers and hunter-gatherers, growing corn and hunting buffalo. Pressure on their villages from other nations, including the Lakhotas, forced displacements and relocations, and once Euro-Americans entered their domain—French fur-traders, the Spanish, and especially Americans after Lewis and Clark—the Arikaras’ strategic location on the Missouri River became both an asset and a liability. Between the Floods follows this resilient semi-sedentary people in their migration and settlement as they confront the challenges of white incursions, tribal conflicts, foreign diseases, the slave trade, and the introduction of horses and metal tools. In the Arikaras’ oral traditions and histories, Mark van de Logt finds a key to their distant past as well as the cultural underpinnings of their resilience and persistence, as faith in their great prophet, Mother Corn, guides them and inspires hope for the future. Enhanced with the insights of archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology, and illustrated with Native maps and ledger art, as well as historic photographs and drawings, Between the Floods brings unprecedented depth, detail, and authenticity to its picture of the Arikaras in the fullness and living presence of their history.

This Far-Off Wild Land
This Far-Off Wild Land

Author: Lesley Wischmann

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2013-06-24

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0806189339

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In the mid-1800s, Andrew Dawson, self-exiled from his home in Scotland, joined the upper Missouri River fur trade and rose through the ranks of the American Fur Company. A headstrong young man, he had come to America at the age of twenty-four after being dismissed from his second job in two years. His poignant sense of isolation is evident throughout his letters home between 1844 and 1861. In This Far-Off Wild Land, Lesley Wischmann and Andrew Erskine Dawson—a relative of this colorful figure—couple an engaging biography of Dawson with thirty-seven of his previously unpublished letters from the American frontier. Three years after he landed in St. Louis, Dawson went up the Missouri in 1847 to what is now North Dakota and Montana, taking command of Fort Berthold, Fort Clark, and eventually Fort Benton, the premier fur trade post of the day. Fort Berthold and Fort Clark, where Dawson worked until 1854, remain two of the least documented American Fur Company posts. His letters infuse life, and occasional high drama, to the stories of these forgotten outposts. At Fort Benton, his insight in establishing commercial warehouses helped the company keep pace with the changing frontier. By the time Dawson returned to Scotland—after twenty years in what he labeled a far-off, wild land—he had risen to become the last “King of the Upper Missouri.” Thoughtfully annotated, Dawson’s letters, discovered only recently by his relatives, provide a rare glimpse into the lonely life of a fur trader in the 1840s and 1850s. Unlike the impersonal business correspondence that makes up most fur trade writings, Dawson’s letters are wonderfully human, suffused with raw emotion. Combining careful research with a compelling story, the authors flesh out the forces that shaped Dawson’s personality and the historical events he recorded.

The Greater Plains
The Greater Plains

Author: Brian Frehner

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2021-07

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1496225074

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This collection of essays represents an attempt to move beyond degradation and exploitation as the defining ecological narratives of the Great Plains by examining the region through the interrelated themes of water, grasses, animals, and energy.

A Life Wild and Perilous
A Life Wild and Perilous

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 1627798838

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“[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier.” —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book Review Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders—such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith—opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. These and other Mountain Men opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845–1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands—thus making the Pacific Ocean America’s western boundary.