The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West

by Robert J. Willoughby

11. Tanis Thorne, The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 83.

  12. Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 40–41. Also see an excellent overview of the Indian fur trade in the classic study, Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 1:4–5.

  13. Leroy Hafen, ed., French Fur Traders & Voyageurs in the American West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 14. Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 40.

  14. Phillips, 2:223–228. Also see Leroy Hafen, ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, 10 vols. (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1965), 1:29–30. Hereafter cited as MMFT.

  15. St. Louis Records Archives Index, Volume 4, Book 2:362, MHS. There are some lists of license holders, beginning in 1790. Also see Abraham P. Nasatir, ed., Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804, 2 vols. (St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1952), 1:134–135. Phillips, 2:224–228.

  16. Thorne, Many Hands, 74.

  17. Reference to the 1790 will be found in the Account of Robidoux Estate, March 17, 1809, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS. Deposition, Adolph Papin v. Patrick Hines et al., 3136, 1856, Hamilton Gamble Papers, MHS. The slave transactions are found in St. Louis Records Archives Index, Volume 2, Book 3:497, 514, MHS. Also see Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 192, and Foley, Missouri, 46–47.

  18. Letter, Trudeau to Carondelet, June 25, 1792, and, Proclamation, July 25, 1792, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:80–81 and 155. Also see Foley, Missouri, 39.

  19. D'Eglise's 1790 visit to the Mandans confirmed in a letter, Trudeau to Carondelet, October 20, 1792. The list of Indian license holders found in a letter, Trudeau to Carondelet, November 12, 1792, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:82–83 and 160–162.

  20. Instructions to Trudeau, March 28, 1792, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:151–152.

  21. Petition, Merchants of St. Louis to Carondelet, June 22, 1793, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:84–86, 181–184.

  22. Regulations for the Illinois Trade, October 15, 1793, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:186–192. Thorne, Many Hands, 103.

  23. Distribution of Missouri Trading Posts, May 3, 1794, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:209–211. Regarding Chouteau's trade with the Osage, see the letter, Trudeau to Gayoso de Lemos, December 20, 1797, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:525–529. Also see Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 52–54. For an excellent overview of Clamorgan, see Abraham P. Nasatir, “Jacques Clamorgan,” in French Fur Traders & Voyageurs in the American West, ed. Leroy Hafen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 124–137. Phillips, 2:229–230.

  24. Articles of Incorporation of the Missouri Company & subsequent petitions, May 1794, Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:217–228. Phillips, 2:238.

  25. Thorne, Many Hands, 107–108.

  26. Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:91–92. Foley, Missouri, 56.

  27. Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:93–108. Phillips, 2:239.

  28. Letter, Trudeau to Gayoso de Lemos, December 20, 1797, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:525–529.

  29. Phillips, 2:234–237.

  30. Letter, Clamorgan to Carondelet, May 26, 1796, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:431432; Phillips, 2:240–241.

  31. Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 1:110–113; Foley, Missouri, 39–40.

  32. Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 80.

  33. Letter, Robidoux to Gayoso de Lemos, March 7, 1798, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:548.

  34. Ibid., 2:548–553.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Regarding Andrew Todd, see the letter, Clamorgan to Carondelet, April 10, 1796, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:417–421. Phillips, 2:240. Regarding the financial losses, see the letter, Clamorgan to Tredeau, June 18, 1798, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:563–566.

  37. Ibid. Also see Nasatir footnotes, Lewis and Clark, 2:553 and 570.

  38. Summary by Delassus of Trade Licenses Issued at St. Louis, 1799–1804, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:590–592.

  39. Letter, Robidoux to Gayoso de Lemos, March 15, 1799, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:593–594.

  40. Letter, Robidoux and Others to Governor of Louisiana, December 8, 1800, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:624–627.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Letter, Casa Calvo to Delassus, February 26, 1801, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:629–630.

  44. Phillips, 2:244.

  45. Letter, Delassus to Casa Calvo, October 7, 1801, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:641–645.

  46. Memorial, Lisa and Others to the Governor, October 8, 1801, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:646–651.

  47. Robidoux and Others, Power of Attorney to Lisa, October 7, 1801, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:665–667.

  48. St. Louis Records Archives Index, Volume 4, Book 3:390–391, MHS.

  49. Foley, Missouri, 63–65. Also see Hafen, MMFT, 1:37–38.

  50. Foley, Missouri, 63–65.

  51. Hafen, MMFT, 37–38. Also see Foley, Missouri, 63–65.

  Chapter 2

  1. The amount is assumed to be in piastres, which was the common denomination used by the French in St. Louis and roughly equal in value to the American dollar. The actual symbol on the sheet resembles the mark for the British pound. If that is the case, then the debt would be substantially higher. Account Sheet of Pierre Chouteau to Robidoux, May 7, 1803, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS. Regarding the emergence of Joseph III as the leader of the family business, see Merrill J. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” in Leroy Hafen, ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, 10 vols. (Spokane, WA: Arthur Clark Company, 2003), 8:287–288.

  2. Deposition, Adolph Papin v. Patrick Hines et al., 31–36, 1856, Hamilton Gamble Papers, MHS. The Orral Messmore Robidoux family history states he went up the Missouri in 1799, but that is contradicted here.

  3. In Joseph Robidoux's frequent business correspondence to company headquarters in St. Louis he always referred to his site by the name Le Serpent Noir, writing in French, which he did well through the 1830s, and the Blacksnake Hills in English documents. See documents in the Chouteau-Maffitt Collection of the MHS. Also see Robert Willoughby, Robidoux's Town: A Nineteenth-Century History of St. Joseph, Missouri (Westphalia, MO: Westphalia Press, 1997), 6–7.

  4. For an excellent overview of French-Indian relationships and culture within the fur trade community, see Thorne, Many Hands, 127–129.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Certification of merchandise, David Duncan to Joseph Robidoux, July 9, 1803, Pierre Chouteau Collection, MHS.

  7. History of Buchanan County, Missouri (Chicago, IL: Union Historical Society, 1881), 393.

  8. Foley, Missouri, 67–69.

  9. Letter, Delassus to Salcedo and Casa Calvo, with enclosure, December 9, 1803, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:719–721. Also see Foley, Missouri, 70–71.

  10. Letter, Governor of Louisiana to Delassus, January 28, 1804, in Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:725.

  11. Foley, Missouri, 71–72. Phillips, 2:246.

  12. Hafen, MMFT, 1:38–39.

  13. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806 (New York: Antiquarian Press, 1959), 1:69.

  14. Nasatir, Lewis and Clark, 2:485. In the manuscript of an article written by Bartlett Boder, for the Museum Graphics magazine, he refers to time and distance calculations made by members of the St. Joseph Historical Society, using the Lewis and Clark journals, to show that the July 7 entry did match where the city is located and where Lewis and Clark would have been on that day. File 26, Boder Collection, St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce, St. Joseph, Missouri. Also see Bartlett Boder, “Old Saint Jo,” Museum Graphics 6, no. 2 (Spring 1954): 8.

  15. Major Z. M. Pike, An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and Through the Western Parts of Louisiana, to the Sources of the Arkansaw, Kans, La Platte, and Pierre Juan, Rivers; Performed by Order of the Government of the United States During the Years 1805,1
806, and 1807 (Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad & Co., 1810), 2.

  16. Record of Robidoux's purchase is noted in American State Papers, 035, Public Lands, Volume 8:342.

  17. License to trade, James Wilkinson to Joseph Robidoux Junior, August 28, 1805, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  18. Foley, Missouri, 113–114. Phillips, 2:249–250.

  19. License, August 27, 1806, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS. See Foley, Missouri, 116–117, and Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 126–127. Also see William Foley, The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 162.

  20. Hafen, MMFT, 1:41. Thwaites, Original Journals, 5:341.

  21. Thwaites, Original Journals, 5:386.

  22. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” in MMFT, 8:293. Also see Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2:714.

  23. Marriage contract, Joseph Robidoux and Eugenie Delisle, April 26, 1806, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS. Also see, Deposition, Adolph Papin v. Patrick Hines et al., 31–36, 1856, Hamilton Gamble Papers, MHS. While there are some mistaken assumptions by local historians that say Joseph and Eugenie married as early as 1800 and that she died about 1805, clearly the fact that they signed a marriage contract in April 1806 should rectify the mistake, which is also repeated by Mattes's article in Hafen, MMFT, 8:294–296. Thorne discusses the issues of social status and the financial problems of the absentee husband in his work; see Many Hands, 123–125.

  24. Demand for payment, L. Darneille to Pierre Chouteau, June 9, 1806, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS.

  25. Phillips, 2:257–259. Hafen, MMFT, 1:42.

  26. Richard Oglesby, Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 126–136. Hafen, MMFT, 1:45–46.

  27. Manifest, July 30, 1808, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS. Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 169.

  28. Transcript, District Court of St. Louis audit of the Joseph Robidoux Estate, October 28, 1813, Chouteau-Maffitt Collection, MHS.

  29. Letter, John Gates to Joseph Robidoux, January 15, 1809, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  30. Commission document, September 8, 1808, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  31. Missouri-Louisiana Gazette, April 12, 1809.

  32. Document of Sale, August 27, 1807, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS.

  33. Foley and Rice, Chouteaus, 172–173.

  34. Appraisal of the estate of Joseph Robidoux, deceased, March 17, 1809, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS.

  35. Robidoux, 60–61; Thorne, Many Hands, 79.

  36. Missouri-Louisiana Gazette, June 7, 1809.

  37. Account sheet, Francois Droven, Chouteau Family Papers, MHS.

  38. Letter, Cavalier & Son to Auguste Chouteau, May 12, 1809, Chouteau-Maffitt Collection, MHS.

  39. Missouri-Louisiana Gazette, August 2, 1809.

  40. Letter, Cavalier & Son to Auguste Chouteau, October 29, 1809, Col. August Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  41. Missouri-Louisiana Gazette, January 11, 1810.

  42. Missouri-Louisiana Gazette, March 22, 1810. There is a mistake in the location of the tract of land one league square. The Des Moines River is two hundred miles above St. Louis, or the track was on the Illinois River, which is about twenty miles from St. Louis where it flows into the Mississippi.

  43. John A. Bryan, “A Study of the Robidoux Sites in Blocks No. 5 and 6 St. Louis,” Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, National Parks Service, April 1938, 16–17.

  44. Letter from Francois Robidoux to Auguste Chouteau, November 25, 1810. Tax receipt, December 8, 1810. Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  45. Bryan, 17. In Bryan's study of the Robidoux's holdings he cites the books of the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds. The citation of church records comes from the Earl Fisher Database of St. Louisans, stlgs.org.

  46. Bryan, 18. Genealogical data from Robidoux, 276–287. Also see Thorne, Many Hands, 127.

  47. Roll of the St. Louis Volunteer Artillerists, March 20, 1814, Missouri Militia Collection, MHS. Also see William Wallace, “Antoine Robidoux,” in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, ed. Leroy Hafen, 10 vols. (Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2001), 4:261.

  48. John C. Luttig, The Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri 1812–1813, ed. Stella Drumm (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1920), 34–35. Also see Hafen, MMFT, 60–61.

  49. Notes on indictment, November 20, 1812, John B. C. Lucas Family Papers, MHS.

  50. Court records, September 1812, John B. C. Lucas Family Papers, MHS.

  51. Chouteau et al. v. Delaurier et al., October 1814, Case Number 17, St. Louis Circuit Court Records, http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu. Also see Hafen, MMFT, 1:46.

  52. Chouteau et al. v. Delaurier et al., October 1814, Case Number 17, St. Louis Circuit Court Records, http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Phillips, 2:269. Oglesby, 136.

  55. Letter, Cavelier & Son to Auguste Chouteau, May 12, 1815, Col. Auguste Chouteau Papers, MHS.

  56. Notes on Inquest, December 28, 1815, John B. C. Lucas Family Papers, MHS.

  57. Hafen, MMFT, 1:61–62. Also see Chittenden, 496.

  58. Missouri Gazette, December 14, 1816.

  59. Ibid., April 27, 1816.

  60. Regarding the location of the Robidoux's store, see Bryan, 17–18.

  61. Joseph Robidoux v. Jeremiah Connors, October 1817, Case Number 2, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis. http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu.

  62. Statement of Howard County licensees, Missouri Gazette, December 6, 1817.

  63. Letter, Joseph Robidoux to Jean and Pierre Laffite, April 15, 1818, private collection of John Lafitte, cited in Bartlett Boder, “Jean Laffite and Joseph Robidoux,” Museum Graphics 2, no. 4 (Fall 1950): 6–10. The photocopies of the original letters offered to the St. Joseph, Missouri, Historical Society by the fourth-generation descendant of Jean Laffite in 1950 were translated from the French and accepted as legitimate.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Francois Leclerc v. Joseph Robidoux, October 1818, Case Number 16, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis. http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu.

  67. Antoine Citoleau v. Joseph Robidoux, October 1818, Case Number 57, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis. http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu.

  68. Jeffrie, a mulatto boy v. Joseph Robidoux, October 1822, Case Number 39, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis. http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu. For an overview of slavery in Missouri during the period, see Perry McCandless, A History of Missouri Volume II 1820–1860 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 57–66.

  69. Jeffrie, a mulatto boy v. Joseph Robidoux, October 1822, Case Number 39, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis. http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu.

  70. Ibid.

  71. Ibid.

  Chapter 3

  1. Jay Gitlin, The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 69–70. Also see Phillips, 2:390.

  2. Letter, Manual Lisa to Mary Lisa, May 25, 1819, Stephen Hempstead Papers, MHS.

  3. Report, Major Thomas Biddle to Colonel Henry Atkinson, October 29, 1819, American State Papers, 08, Indian Affairs, Volume 2:202. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:296. Phillips, 2:391.

  4. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:288–303. Also see Robidoux, passim.

  5. Promissory note, James Barnes to J. and A. Robidoux, March 6, 1819, Parker-Russell Papers, MHS.

  6. Nicholas Hardeman, Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Western Movement, 1750–1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977), 79.

  7. St. Louis Enquirer, April 27, 1822.

  8. John C. Calhoun, “Alt
eration of the System for Trading with the Indians,” December 8, 1818, American State Papers, 08, Indian Affairs, Volume 2:183.

  9. J. N. B. Hewitt, ed., Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz: An Account of His Experiences Among Fur Traders and American Indians on the Mississippi and the Upper Missouri Rivers During the Years 1846–1852, trans. Myrtis Jarrell (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 66–67. Also see Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:295.

  10. Edgar B. Wesley, ed., “Diary of James Kennerly: 1823–1826,” Missouri Historical Society Collections 6 (October 1928): 41–97.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Letter, John C. Calhoun to William Clark, March 15, 1819, National Archives and Records Administration, Microfilm M15, roll 4. For an excellent overview of the problem of liquor in the Indian trade, see Tanis Thorne, “Liquor Has Been Their Undoing; Liquor Trafficking and Alcohol Abuse in the Lower Missouri Fur Trade,” Gateway Heritage 13 (Fall 1992): 4–23.

  13. Report, Major Thomas Biddle to Colonel Henry Atkinson, October 29, 1819, American State Papers, 08, Indian Affairs, Volume 2:202.

  14. Thorne, “Liquor,” 7–9.

  15. Missouri Gazette, July 5, 1820.

  16. John Paxton, Paxton's Directory of St. Louis, 1821. The reference to “C” Street was an error, as the location on Main crossed South C, later Myrtle Street. Regarding the changing society of St. Louis, see Thorne, “Liquor,” 7, and Bryan, 18.

  17. St. Louis Republican, July 30, 1823.

  18. Ibid., December 31, 1823.

  19. Missouri Gazette, February 28, 1821.

  20. Ibid., February 27, 1822.

  21. St. Louis Republican, March 9, 1823.

  22. Letter from the Secretary of War, Transmitting an Abstract of All Licenses Granted by Superintendents of Indian Trade, December 15, 1823, 18th Congress, 1st Session, Document 7. (All such documents are hereafter cited as Abstract of Licenses.) Also see Phillips, 2:393–394.

  23. Abstract of Licenses.

  24. Mattes, “Joseph Robidoux,” 8:296. Regarding the Otoe post, see Dale L. Morgan, ed., The West of William H. Ashley: 1822–1838 (Denver, CO: Old West Publishing Company, 1964), 231 n. 55.

  25. From the St. Louis Enquirer, reprinted in the Missouri Intelligencer, September 17, 1822.