The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West
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Grandfather Joseph died unexpectedly in September 1771, and the son, hereafter called Joseph II, made the decision to stay in St. Louis rather than return to Montreal. We know he engaged in some activities related to the fur trade, but like others in St. Louis, he made more money from a variety of ventures, often as a real estate broker and investor. From the early records of St. Louis, between 1780 and 1800, he appeared to have become both creditor and debtor, buying and selling property, both farmland and town lots with houses, and on occasion buying and selling slaves. He owned a bakery and served as witness and executor in legal matters, even as an appraiser of estates, for other members of the city's French fraternity of families. By doing so, he rose somewhat in the social rankings of the French community.
The rise did not come completely without problems, though. In January 1780, Robidoux went to court to get relief from members of the community, a Louis Robert and one Luc Marly, who spread rumors that the Robidoux family had left Canada under less than friendly terms, specifically, that an uncle had murdered his wife and other family members had desecrated religious symbols and “sold their souls to the devil.” Their motivation for attacking Robidoux may have stemmed from jealousy, as he had proposed marriage to a Mademoiselle Bequet, the daughter of the local blacksmith, Monsieur Bequet. Bequet, having heard the rumors about the Robidoux family, turned down Joseph's request to marry his daughter. The Spanish lieutenant governor, Fernando de Leyba, a fairly new arrival in St. Louis, served as the judge. Both sides were required to present character witnesses, with seven men supporting the Robidouxs as being honest and law abiding, and eight stating that various members of the clan had committed crimes and sacrilege in nearly every frontier site from Montreal to Fort Chartres. Leyba found no basis of proof to render a decision favoring either side, so he simply ordered all to keep silent, hopefully ending the defamation of the Robidoux family name.5
During 1780 Joseph II received a lieutenant commission in the Second Company of the St. Louis militia under Captain Don Eugenio Pourée, a sign that he had built some status beyond that of a common soldier. In September 1782, he signed a marriage contract with the daughter of Miguel Rolet (alias Laderoute as some records state), named Catalina, Cathalina, or Chatalina Rolet dit Laderoute, or simply, Catherine Rolet. At age thirty-three, Joseph II took a young bride, as she may have been only fifteen at the time according to church records that list her baptism in 1767. Typically, the couple followed the marriage contract with a church ceremony with the benefit of a Catholic priest.6
The six sons of Joseph Robidoux II and Catherine Rolet began with Joseph III, born on August 3, 1784, in St. Louis.7 He was followed by Francois, born September 24, 1788; Pierre Isadore (also frequently spelled Isidore), who used his middle name, November 2, 1791; Antoine, September 22, 1794; Louis, born August 5, 1796; and Michel (Michael), August 3, 1798. There were also two daughters, Eulalie born in 1800 and Maria Pelagie in 1802, and at least two children who did not survive infancy. The boys began growing up in a large two-story stone house fronting on Second Street in Block 6 of the original plat of St. Louis, within easy view of the Mississippi River. In 1794, the family acquired a large tract of land via a grant from then governor Trudeau in the area of St. Ferdinand's Common Fields surrounding the settlement of Florissant. There, they lived for a while on Rue St. Charles residing with other notable French families of the St. Louis establishment.8
Each had been born a subject of the king of Spain, residing in the land called Spanish Illinois (even though it lay on the bank opposite modern Illinois), or the still commonly used French designation, upper Louisiana, of which St. Louis served as the capital and seat of the Spanish lieutenant governor. There could be no mistaking the French culture of St. Louis they grew up in, more specifically the Creole culture, which blended the European heritage with the American-born personage and which remained dominant throughout their lives. From the architecture of the homes to the common language on the streets and river landing to the fashion of business, and social interaction, St. Louis clearly began, and would remain, Franco-American for a long time. By 1783, the year before the birth of Joseph II's first son, St. Louis had nearly nine hundred people. That the Spanish had taken over meant very little except for having to deal with the new administration.9
The Creole culture of late-nineteenth-century St. Louis would have probably shocked many of the new Anglo Protestant neighbors across the Mississippi. The people enjoyed their games like cards and billiards, drinking wine or liquors at any time of day for any reason, gambling on nearly any activity, especially horse racing, and they loved dancing. Every Saturday night, the people of the community, with “scarcely any distinction of classes,” held parties, fueled by drink and fiddle music. On Sunday, they rose and went to Mass, as devout Catholics, then returned to their revelry with their families and friends for the rest of the day. Some visitors overlooked what appeared to most Anglo-Americans as “odious works of iniquity,” and found the French Creoles “prone to hospitality, urbanity of manners, and innocent recreation, and as devout as any Puritan.” For visitors of status or importance the homes of leading citizens like the Chouteaus would be opened; the fine silver, crystal, and candelabra would be brought out; and house servants poured the best wines found in the cellar. Mostly they found that the Creoles practiced what they preached: “men were made for happiness.”10
The economy of the world they were born into had been established on a French model dating to the early seventeenth century. It is true that French Creoles, and newly arrived settlers from elsewhere in Europe, established farms and worked for a degree of self-sufficiency, even surplus. Once onto the broad river plains of Louisiana, fine farms and plantations produced excellent crops of grain, orchards, and fat livestock. The French, though, had come to America primarily for fish and furs. They caught the fish themselves, but they quickly found that the best way to acquire furs was not by sending out men to trap them, as would become the later American model, but to simply buy them from the Indians. Buy is an inexact term, better the word barter. Indians had no need for cash, cash credit, or the accounting it required. What they wanted consisted of trade goods, products produced in Europe and given in exchange for set numbers and kinds of pelts. Pelts became a kind of frontier currency, and the trade for them raised high enthusiasm among the French Creole male population, who found it more exciting, glamorous, manly, and lucrative than tilling the soil.11
The French, and all the other European powers doing business in America, the Spanish, English, Dutch, and even Swedes, all had preferences for which they paid the highest prices, but the reality was that if it walked on all fours and had a fur-covered body, they made it a tradable commodity. Bear, bison, deer, otter, mink, muskrat, beaver, and even the lowly and ugly opossum had a value. In exchange, the Indians wanted practical items that served their lifestyle, rather than simply embellished it, preferring blankets, cloth, ribbons, iron products, like kettles and knives, steel traps when available, guns, powder and shot, and yes, even glass beads and mirrors, though the novelty of some items quickly wore off. Some food stuffs could be used for trade at times, and liquor, always liquor. That an Indian made drunk could be taken advantage of, had become well known before European whites passed the first ridge of mountains, and though some moral and later governmental edicts against using liquor as a trade item existed, the inducement continued. Whatever tools the white merchants employed to make their deals, there can be no mistaking that the Indians dealt back just as shrewdly and sharply to get what they considered the best exchange. In the white merchant's business model, he paid the least amount of money possible for the trade items in exchange for the highest number of pelts the Indians would barter. After packing and shipping, the pelts and skins went to Europe where they returned a tenfold or even a hundredfold profit. But risk always accompanied the Indian trade. Trade goods could be lost by accident on the inland waterways, stolen or looted by Indians, unhappy with the deals they made, or taken as a ret
ribution if they considered themselves cheated.12
Inland merchants had a clear advantage in the Indian trade simply because of their proximity to the source. But they had to have their trade goods shipped to them from the ports on the coasts, either through Canada via the long water route along the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes or from New Orleans, up the Mississippi, to the outposts at the confluences of the Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Des Moines, and numerous smaller tributaries. Depending on the size and wealth of the merchant trading houses, they might be the operation of a single man and the immediate family, or something resembling a partnership or even small consortium, with dozens of workers, ranging from clerks to dockhands to field agents or traders living with various tribes. More often than not, in St. Louis, the merchant houses were extended family businesses, spanning multiple generations and frequently including in-laws. In the business, blood truly was thicker than water. Nearly all the families in St. Louis had connections to the fur trade in some way, but not all were equal. Those families with the greatest resources, equating to greater influence with the Spanish officials, came to control the very foundation of the business. The Chouteaus reigned chief among them, a huge family that intermarried with nearly every other trading family to form not only business ties, but blood ties as well.13
The trade situation in St. Louis changed, at least on paper, in 1783. The American Revolution formally ended with the Treaty of Paris, and the ceding of all the land on the east bank of the Mississippi River to the new United States. But things did not change quickly. British military forces did not leave the forts right away, and more important, traders who had built relations with area tribes were in no hurry to evacuate the area. The new nation did not have the resources to push them out, so British traders continued to work the upper Mississippi in direct competition with the Spanish. The British played the game better than anyone else and the French traders in St. Louis did more business with them than their new Spanish overlords. The knowledge that the Americans would eventually replace the British provided a cause for worry in St. Louis, as they viewed their new neighbors on the east bank as being just as ambitious as their former mother country.14
Like most of the St. Louis dons, Joseph II did not spend extended periods out among the Indians trading. He used hired men or engagés for the fieldwork, so likely he remained at home in St. Louis during much of the childhoods of his sons. As his sons came of age, the father began to acquaint each of them in his business, connect them with his associates, and even employ them in elements of the fieldwork of the Indian fur trade. Those associates included men of great status in the St. Louis-based trade, ranging from the high political position of the lieutenant governor of upper Louisiana, to explorers and voyageurs, men who had ascended the Missouri at least as far as the Mandans, over five hundred French leagues (approximately sixteen hundred miles) above St. Louis. Logically Joseph II did have those men, his associates, in his house, and their stories of fortunes won and lost, dangerous encounters with nature, and hostile Indians must have inflamed the imagination of the boys growing up there.
Through the decade of the 1780s there exists no record that Joseph II received a license to trade with the Indians on the lower Missouri from the Spanish governor. He does not appear on any document listing license holders and apparently did not want to pay the going price. He did maintain trade contacts in Canada, through Michilimackinac, and the upper Mississippi River. It is more likely that those who actually held exclusive trade licenses allowed the risk to be spread by giving men like Robidoux a chance at partnership, to share in the expenses as well as potential profits. With the vast territory, and Spanish forces to police them so scant, trading without a license only mattered in the rare instant that someone would actually be caught or turned in by a competitor. By 1785, the Spanish had advanced up the Missouri to the mouth of the Platte, but beyond that they knew very little. In August 1786, Pedro Quesnel acknowledged a debt he owed to Robidoux, who had financed a “voyage to the nation of the Missouri.” Quesnel used the money for goods and salaries paid to employees. The mortgage he gave Robidoux included his house and grounds and a fifteen-year-old slave girl, Margarita.15
In December 1790, Joseph II made out his will and testament, indicating he may have become, at least temporarily, seriously ill. He assigned certain credits owed him for the care of his young sons. Their mother would, of course, be cared for, and as they were upper class, she had assistance from slaves to keep the large family, as did nearly all of the substantial French families. The Spanish governor promoted the ownership of slaves to encourage farming. By 1794, one-third of the St. Louis population was black.16 Joseph II bought and sold slaves throughout his life and there are records of several transactions. On February 24, 1801, he sold to Francois Maria Benoit a slave named Robe. On October 19, 1802, he sold to Carlos Sanguinet a slave named Antonio Mina. Female slaves were listed as part of the estate of Joseph II. As Joseph Robidoux III recalled in a deposition given late in his life, “A great many of the people in St. Louis when I lived here owned slaves—most all owned some. I knew Mad. Chouteau, she owned plenty of slaves.”17
The French merchants, by 1790, established some trade with the Indians along the lower Missouri, below the Platte, which involved the Osage, Missouri, Kansa, Otoe, Panis, Omaha-Mahas, and Ponca. By no means lucrative at the time, Spanish officials hoped to improve the trade to make the administration of upper Louisiana less of a drain on resources. But who among the leading men of St. Louis they allowed to trade with each tribe always proved contentious. Spanish governors during the late 1700s, among them Esteban Miro, had given a monopoly to trade to certain individuals with a certain tribe. But the governors could provide no real means of official enforcement. Then, in 1792, the new governor of Louisiana, Francois Luis Hector, the Baron de Carondelet, opened trade to all Spanish subjects along the Missouri.18
Joseph II does not appear on a list of license holders from November 1792, but in March 1793 he joined Boneventura Collell in outfitting an expedition led by the legendary Jacques D'Eglise, who had ascended the Missouri as far as the Mandan villages in 1790. Further expeditions, by any voyageurs, had double intent; both to trade with newly found Indian tribes and, at the behest of Spanish officials, specifically Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau, and Governor-General Carondelet, learn more about the natives of the distant lands, “their trade, habitats, customs, numbers, and other items of interest.” The politicians were also keen to know how far the British traders of the North West Fur Company had advanced in the Spanish domain west of the Mississippi River. D'Eglise and his partner Joseph Garreau found the Missouri blocked by hostilities between the Sioux and Arikara and returned with no profit. In fact D'Eglise stated that Garreau, “a scoundrel,” had abandoned him to live with the Arikara. As D'Eglise later petitioned the governor-general for some compensation for his losses, there could be no doubt that Joseph Robidoux II took a financial loss.19
Carondelet's proclamation of 1792, opening trade to all along the Missouri, had an impact on Joseph II and most of the St. Louis merchants who opposed the action. Their primary concern lay only partially with competition within the French/Spanish community, but more with the British, who seemed to have more and better merchandise to entice the Indians, and the perceived though never materialized threat of the on-coming Americans. Carondelet had clearly stated his fear and repulsion toward the Americans in his instructions to his lieutenant governor, Zenon Trudeau. “You will try by every means to increase the population without admitting into the towns, nevertheless, vagabond persons and persons of evil customs, corrupted in manners and outcasts of the nations, especially Americans or English.” Further, in the same instructions, “You will exert yourself to maintain peace and good harmony with the English and Americans but you must always bear in mind that the latter are much more terrible at present for the Dominions of His Majesty than the English. In this concept, you will try to maintain in the mind of the savages the fear and mistrust whic
h they have conceived of the Americans.” But, Carondelet also told Trudeau, “In case of a war between Spain and the Americans, you will try to avail yourself of the English in order to maintain yourself in your post; and vice-versa in case of war against the English avail yourself of the Americans.”20 There can be little wonder why the French in Spanish St. Louis found it difficult for some generations to look on Americans without some distain as outsiders.
In 1793 Carondelet responded to the petition of thirty-eight of the leading St. Louis merchants, who wrote, “May the merchants and inhabitants be permitted to represent very humbly that the plan which Your Excellency has conceived and put into execution, far from attaining the end which your justice and kindness had proposed, has on the contrary brought consternation, sorrow and desolation to the hearts of the majority of the citizens and prepared their future ruin on whichever side they look.”21 The merchants didn't like the previous monopolistic practices, but they didn't see any real value in completely free trade, either. Carondelet issued new trade regulations in October 1793, consisting of twenty-three articles, to be locally managed by a syndic of commerce, one of the leading St. Louis merchants. The trade on the Missouri, based on drawing lots, had a minimum residency requirement. Further articles of the trade agreements dealt with conflicts between traders, encouragement of hiring whites over blacks, métis or persons of mixed French-Indian heritage, or full-blood Indians, no foreign engagés, and the undertaking of expeditions against foreigners, meaning the English, who horned in on their trade. Taking liquor to the Indians remained strictly forbidden.22
They also petitioned to form a consortium of merchants called Corps du commerce, which in turn would create “The Company of Explorers of the Upper Missouri,” or simply, the Missouri Company. The merchants elected the principal of the company, Jacques (Santiago is the name cited on Spanish documents) Clamorgan, and Joseph Robidoux affixed his name as one of twenty signatories on the charter. In early May 1794, after gaining Lieutenant Governor Trudeau's permission, Clamorgan called a meeting of the St. Louis merchants to divide the Indian trade along the Missouri. He based the trade on a set value, 6,000 livres (about $1,000 in silver), for the shares in each of the major tribes. Joseph II signed the list of twelve shareholders for the Grands Osage. That status proved short lived, for after petitioning the governor, Auguste Chouteau received exclusive privilege to trade with the 1,200-men-strong Osage tribes, shutting out all others.23