The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West
Page 11
Arriving in Taos during the early summer of 1824, Antoine found a Spanish outpost town, on the model of Santa Fe, but smaller. A census report dated from 1827 listed Santa Fe with a population of 5,757, and Taos with 3,606 souls, although that number seems high even with the influx of Americans.6 Taos lay seventy miles north-northeast of Santa Fe with the Rio del Norte, the upper Rio Grande, seven miles to the west. Thick-walled buildings of sun-dried clay bricks surrounded a central plaza, and a Catholic Church, pastored by the Franciscan padres for the small Mexican population and the larger Indian parish, dominated the town. What made Taos more appealing to many Americans, over Santa Fe, proved to be the near absence of and less observant characteristics of the Mexican customs officials, who worked far beyond the view of the governor in Santa Fe. Companies or brigades of American trappers could seemingly come and go in Taos, meet American traders, likewise interested in lax customs enforcement, dispose of their furs, resupply, even get drunk and blow off steam with “Taos Lightning,” then go back immediately into the field to take more beaver. The growing number of Americans coming to work the fur trade did not go unobserved by the government of Mexico. In June 1824, the governor in Santa Fe received orders to stop foreigners from harvesting furs. How he would enforce the order in such an immense territory must have seemed improbable, if not out right impossible. The governor's only real tool for enforcement consisted of the Mexican army garrison in Santa Fe, but it rarely exceeded 120 men, supposed to patrol a half million square miles.7
Moving out of Taos in late summer took the trappers and hunters into the mountains for the fall hunt. The pelts or plews were not of good quality during the summer, but in the cooler autumn the fur thickened. Pelts taken in the spring were the best, and over the winter months, unless they could find a sheltered valley, the trappers found conditions along the streams severe. Most trappers holed up or came down to the towns like Taos for the winter months. Antoine may have operated as an independent, but more than likely he continued in the company of Etienne Provost, as the captain of a group of trappers. There were other trapping brigades moving out at the same time, and also heading for the Green River area. Traveling in a large company offered protection from Indian attack, but once into the area of the beaver streams, those companies broke up into small independent groups of five or fewer to cover more area and produce more profit. On any given stretch of a beaver stream, three or four men would have been enough. By then the practice of trapping beaver had been pretty well perfected with the use of the steel trap.8
Heading north and west from Taos, Antoine followed a northern branch of the Old Spanish Trail, the main route of which connected Santa Fe and Los Angeles, California. The northern branch led out of New Mexico along the east bank of the Rio del Norte, through the San Luis Valley into Colorado, over the continental divide through the Cochetopa Pass, and into the valley of the Gunnison (also called Grand) River. The Gunnison flowed into the upper Colorado River, and upon reaching that point they left the Old Spanish Trail and turned northwest over a series of barren plateaus and highlands, over which the various trapping parties blazed their own trails. Eventually they reached the confluence of the Green River and its tributaries, including the White and the Uintah (Unita).9
A traveler named Rufus Sage, writing fifteen years later, described the grandeur of land Robidoux and the first trapping parties trekked across. “The intermediate country, from Taos to the Uintah, is generally very rough and diversified with rich valleys, beautiful plateaux, arid prairies, sterile plains, and barren mountains. We usually found a sufficiency of timber upon the streams, as well as among the hills, where frequently groves of pinion, cedar, and pine lent an agreeable diversity to the scene. Game appeared in great abundance nearly the whole route,—especially antelope and deer. The prevailing rock consisted of several specimens of sandstone, puddingstone, and granite, with limestone, (fossiliferous, bituminous and argillaceous,) and basalt. This territory is owned by the Utahs (Utes) and Navajo Indians.”10
William Huddart, traveling with one of several trapping expeditions in 1824, encountered one of the Robidoux brothers, undoubtedly Antoine, in the Green River region. His account appeared in the Franklin, Missouri, paper, the Intelligencer, on April 19, 1825. “On the 24th of August he, in company with fourteen others left Taos for the purpose of trapping for beaver, and traveled west thirty days. On Green River the company separated, and nine ascended the river. Our informant was among those who remained; and in a few days they accidentally fell in with five other Americans, among them was Mr. Rubideau.”11 After the encounter, Arapaho Indians attacked Huddart's party, killing one and robbing the rest. They reportedly departed the area leaving Robidoux and his men up in the mountains without a horse or mule to their name. Questioning the accuracy of the date in Huddart's statement to the newspaper, which would have placed him in contact with Antoine's party sometime after September 24 and early in October 1824 in what is now eastern Utah. Huddart reportedly left New Mexico to return to Missouri in January 1825.
Another contemporary, William Gordon, trapping in the Rocky Mountains for two years prior to the Robidoux expedition, reported in 1831 to secretary of war that he knew that “eight of Nolidoux's [assumed Robidoux] men were killed by Comanche.” That initial statement did not specify a time, other than the year 1824, or place, so we are left to wonder, assuming the information is true, did the attack come against the party of Antoine or Francois? Eight men represented a horrendous loss, so if Gordon spoke of Francois's party, which departed much later than Antoine, it would have been a catastrophic encounter. The Santa Fe Trail did pass through Comanche country along the Cimarron cutoff between the upper Arkansas and Red River area of present-day western Oklahoma and north Texas. The Comanche did attack at their whim the Americans traversing the Santa Fe Trail, and many travelers documented and stressed the need to have firepower at hand when entering Indian country. It is most likely that the parties of Antoine and Francois, coming from Council Bluffs, staying north of the trail from Missouri to Santa Fe, traveling directly to Taos via Colorado, would have been less likely to encounter the Comanche.12
Another, more plausible explanation, may go back to the point that Antoine had traveled west with Etienne Provost as a captain of a group of trappers and been involved in the attack on Provost and other French-American mountaineers by the Snake Indians in the autumn of 1824. Apparently a Snake Indian chief called Band Gocha met Provost and his company on the present-day Jordon River between Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake. The Frenchmen were convinced to set aside their arms while they smoked the peace pipe. While sitting in a ring, the Indians pulled knives from their blankets and commenced a slaughter. Some of the Frenchmen escaped, including Provost, but, according to one source as many as fifteen may have been killed. It is most certain that Antoine went into the Green River valley, and beyond it into northeastern Utah with Provost. In the summary of the testimony Gordon gave, the reference had been corrected to say the Snake, not the Comanche, had indeed attacked Robidoux's party and the eight men killed were in the employ of Provost & Le Clerc Company. The digestion of all that information still leaves many questions as to Antoine's exact whereabouts, but we must conclude that his first full season of trapping the interior of the Rockies proved eventful at least.13
On September 30, 1824, Kennerly wrote, “Roubidoux party started for St Afee to day.” The leadership of the party is attributed to Francois. While other parties bound for Santa Fe had been using Franklin as their jumping-off point, Francois and the others proceeded north to the Council Bluffs post before starting overland. That is where their main western supply base stood, and where they could receive any last-minute directions from the eldest brother, Joseph.14
Besides the leader Francois, the party included brothers Louis, who likely had gone out the year before and returned, Michel, and Isadore, as well as several members of the French and Spanish trade community from St. Louis, including Manuel Alvarez and Antoine Lamanche. Formal permiss
ion had been attained from the governor of Missouri, Alexander McNair, who signed the travel papers for eleven men on September 3, 1824. Alvarez, a Spanish national, proved an ambitious young man, having traveled widely, logging previous trips to Mexico, Cuba, and New York City before arriving in St. Louis and making both business and personal connections there. A slight man, five feet two inches, his eventual influence in New Mexico trade and politics belied his physical stature.15
The freelance activities of the Brothers Robidoux, and especially Joseph, had the attention of and apparently the blessing of the people he worked for, Berthold, Pratte, and the Chouteaus in St. Louis. But just as apparently, the field agents in the Council Bluffs area did not share the same information. They felt it their duty to report the coming and going of the brothers, and their activities, a job that fell to the supervising field partner, J. P. Cabanné, who had a great personal dislike for Robidoux.
In October 1824 he wrote to Pierre Chouteau, to whom he was related by marriage, from the “Establishment at the Bluff.” “Robidoux arrived here the 14th of last month (September) two days after we did, and at the moment when I was going to accompany Mr. Berthold to the Bluff, to rejoin the barge of the Sioux. He came, I say, full of ardor, and interested only with his trip to the mountains, with the merchandise, more than twenty horses, advanced to the engages to the number of twelve, all of which were taken for the most part from our store—what an annoyance!” From the comment in the letter one might have assumed that Joseph himself was headed west, but that was not the case. The letter does corroborate the size of the party. Cabanné knew the Robidouxs headed in the direction of Santa Fe. He also probably guessed that once arrived, the brothers intended to shadow William H. Ashley's foray into the beaver rich Green River Valley.16
Cabanné clearly objected to Joseph Robidoux's ambitious plans but tried to buy in when there appeared no other option. “I want to oppose this trip by trying to tell him how indelicate his conduct is, and even blamable, in wanting to appropriate to himself a branch of the business which we are certainly not going to give up.” Cabanné referred to the operations of the parent company at the Bluffs post, the exact name of which required a monthly score card, as investors and partners came and went as through a revolving door. Berthold, Pratte & Chouteau briefly became Bernard Pratte & Company of which Berthold and Chouteau were partners, by 1824, with Cabanné chief factor on the upper Missouri. That company received a license to trade with “different tribes within the Missouri Agency,” on October 6, 1824, from Benjamin O'Fallon, the Indian agent.17
Cabanné knew of Robidoux's side operation but still felt blind sided, complaining that Mr. Pratte had not kept him informed of intended operations farther west. He also felt that Joseph Robidoux had gone behind his back and made deals he had no knowledge of, hence the accusations of disloyalty. “Lacking all means of being able myself to send anyone, I took a third interest in the expedition [Robidoux's] and I entered $1,200 in the capital, which was due us from the hunters of the mountains.” Pratte & Company had operations on the upper Missouri near the confluence with the James River. Slyvestre Pratte, the young son of the principal partner, had taken a number of engagés north to trade with the Sioux Indians. Those hunters may be the ones Cabanné referred to when he said he could not put together his own expedition to the mountains.18
It clearly appeared to Cabanné that Joseph Robidoux had taken the initiative to promote himself from just an engagé to something much more. “Already and not without reason he rejoices in the anticipation of the fortune he expects, indifferent and as a stranger to all that I can do he seems to occupy himself only in bringing in irresolution which is rather the peculiarity of his character.” Cabanné proposed stripping Robidoux of means and merchandise, thus ending his ambition. And Cabanné saw something else, “This indifference on our part rehabilitates the Missouri Fur Company,” a reference to a number of traders on both the upper and lower Missouri, still active in the field, who had previously been agents of that now-defunct company. In Cabanné's eyes, Robidoux, still technically an employee, had started up a competing business under the guise of the former company.
Beyond that, Cabanné saw more troubles in a declining lower Missouri River trade, and in collecting credits from the Missouri tribes because of government limitations. “The law, that absurd law which has just been passed, has chased from all the Indian villages all the whites who resided there and who had made the decision to follow the Spanish who left a few days before my arrival. With their help I will be able to send to the mountains and give Robidoux competition, which would have been of more value to us than we have in his expedition, and which would have saved us from finding ourselves under the direction of faithless people, who are without honor. I censured Laforce [Papin] for not having tried to hold back the hunters until my arrival.”19
Cabanné could not lay Joseph Robidoux's ambition entirely upon his perceived penchant for disloyalty to the company. Referring to the engagé Laforce's words, and remembering the disaster of the previous year near the Yellowstone, he recalled to Chouteau,
He told me that G. S. Pratte, when he passed through here, had assured him that the mountains would remain exclusively Robidoux's and that the company did not desire to send there any more, and that after that he [Laforce] even thought he was doing well in paying off part of the engagés. No doubt Pratte in good faith believed what that rascal of a Robd. might have told him. So my friend, everything seems to have cooperated in the success of him who had the least right to claim it, in justice and in honor, and it all comes in great part from our lack of confidence, and, in fact, could I blame you for having lacked it after you had up to the present seen the unfortunate results of these distant expeditions? Next year we must expect strong competition. So we need cheap merchandise to withstand the struggle; direct yourself accordingly. Mr. Berthold will find himself without opposition. I hope he will profit by it.20
According to Alvarez, the party led by Francois reached Taos in late November 1824, having traversed the Great Plains in approximately two months. He did not mention an Indian attack and if they, and not Antoine, encountered the disastrous meeting with the Comanche that William Gordon possibly suggested, then they were indeed fortunate as two-thirds of their party would have been killed. The Robidoux brothers quickly set up shop and Manuel Alvarez went to work for Francois shortly after arrival.21 While Santa Fe attracted a good number of American merchants, setting up their storefronts around the main plaza, Taos became the focal point of those interested in the fur trade. Etienne Provost and Ceran St. Vrain operated out of Taos with large companies of trappers in 1824 and it became the destination of the large parties of trappers from Missouri. There they refitted, set their plans, and then moved west into the river valleys of the Gunnison, Rio Grande, Rio del Norte, Colorado, Green, and numerous tributaries.22
Contemporary newspaper articles, like the brief descriptions in Huddart's letter, and by the writings of others, including Thomas “Peg-leg” Smith, support the importance of Taos to early fur traders. Smith became one of the most colorful mountain men in the history of the West. He recalled encountering Antoine Robidoux, John Roland, and twenty-five men from Provost's company in Taos in February 1825. That recollection of Smith might be fairly accurate for Antoine may have managed to improve his dire condition reported by Huddart and returned there with any furs he had taken the Green River Valley.23
Taos became a focal point for French and Anglo trappers and traders for other reasons. The native people of the Mexican frontier readily accepted the newcomers whom they called norteamericanos or los extranjeros. The native population base of the upper Rio Arriba, the broad high plain between the Rio Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, on which Taos was sited, remained low, 700 to 1,500, less than a quarter of the larger Santa Fe area seventy miles to the south, so new arrivals found a welcome. The warm welcome and the beautiful natural setting of Taos attracted the Americans, but probably even more so did the female
inhabitants of the region. Compelled by the physical attraction of the American men, with their light skin, and the desire to improve their economic or social status through intermarriage, with or without the benefit of clergy, Mexican women opened their arms to the norteamericanos. The physical attraction went both ways. American trappers and traders, far from their eastern homes, wives, and families, found the dark-haired, dark-eyed Mexican señoritas, with their small feet, well-turned ankles, narrow waists, and ample bosoms, frequently on display because of the low-cut fashion of the region, along with the less-inhibited culture, hard to resist. Taos proved to be “the” town for Mexican-American matchmaking, and eventually became, according to the historian Rebecca Craver, “the marriage mecca” of the entire region of northern New Mexico.24
Back at the Bluffs, Cabanné's claims that Joseph Robidoux had used company money, supplies, men, and horses for his private ventures to, as Robidoux said, “hunt two hares at the same time” were somehow unjustified and the result of Cabanné's poor memory. Robidoux held his tongue for a long time, and claimed he had not wronged anyone. He might work for the company at Council Bluffs, but as far as the Rocky Mountain region and the Southwest trade, they were competitors. He reiterated his position, how the deal to go to the mountains had been originally consummated, and complained about his treatment by the company in a letter to the Chouteaus:
…in regard to my making a trip to Mexico. You have such a good memory that I need not recall to you what we told one another about this voyage, we all are aware of it, you permitted it to me without reluctance, you sold me merchandise, bought horses etc. I had planned this undertaking, bought everything, before we had received any news about my brother Michel with 30 packs of beaver—and also, it was not until after his return that Mr. Cabanne reproached saying I ought not to chase two hares at the same time, by taking away from you this branch of business—because I was your engagee.