The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West Read online

  THE BROTHERS ROBIDOUX AND THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN WEST

  Robert J. Willoughby

  University of Missouri Press

  Columbia and London

  Copyright © 2012 by

  The Curators of the University of Missouri

  University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  All rights reserved

  5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12

  Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress

  ISBN 978-0-8262-1991-6

  This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.

  Jacket design: Andrea Hall

  Interior design and composition: Jennifer Cropp

  Printing and binding: Thomson-Shore, Inc.

  Typefaces: Minion and News Gothic

  ISBN: 978-0-8262-7291-1 (electronic)

  FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN, THE JOY OF MY LIFE, Max, Seth, Ben, Aiden, Audrey, Sam, George, Emma, Connor, Natalie, Katherine, Mollie, and those yet to be born.

  Contents

  Preface and Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1 The Business of the Father

  Chapter 2 Emerging Sons

  Chapter 3 Working the Missouri

  Chapter 4 Into the Mountains

  Chapter 5 Trouble at Council Bluffs

  Chapter 6 The Blacksnake Hills Post

  Chapter 7 Brothers in New Mexico

  Chapter 8 Joseph Builds His Own Town

  Chapter 9 Dwindling Prospects in the Mountains

  Chapter 10 War and Finding Home

  Chapter 11 Queen City of the West

  Chapter 12 The End of Their Era

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Preface and Acknowledgments

  This is a biography of six brothers who left an indelible mark on the opening of the American West. I refer to them as the Brothers Robidoux, as if they represent a single entity, for despite being individuals, who at points in their lives went their own way, they so frequently worked together that it is sometimes difficult to tell their efforts apart. It is true that the eldest of the brothers, Joseph, seemed to assume the role of leader in many of their joint ventures, but it would be unfair to the others to simply identify them as his puppets. The geographic canvas of their works and travels expanded to so broad an area of the West that no single one of them completely controlled the family's destiny.

  A noted western historian once wrote that to attempt such a biography of the Brothers Robidoux would be foolhardy.1 So I write this as much as a witness to the time they lived in, and what they saw, as it is about their personal lives. The reason for this approach is based on the fact that so much of their lives, now and forever, remains unaccounted. There is yet to be found a diary or memoir written by any of them in their own hand. From the existing documents it appears that only one of the six has much in the way of regular correspondence with anyone, and while many of the letters he sent came to rest in an archive here and there, he in turn apparently never saved any he received. The brothers are mentioned, tantalizing bits and pieces, in contemporary newspapers, government and court documents, and in the accounts of those who knew them, or at least crossed paths with them, primarily in the conduct of business. Very little is of a personal nature or deals with family relationships. Much is therefore supposition or educated guess, but when put in the context of what happened in the West during that period, on such a grand scale, things fall better into place and the importance of the brothers emerges.

  The correspondence we have regarding Joseph Robidoux setting up shop at the Blacksnake Hills is the most substantial, but one sided, in that only his letters to Pierre Chouteau Jr., and a few others in St. Louis, have survived. Joseph, putting his own curse on future historians, in fact confirmed that he did not save any correspondence. “I do not keep a copy of all my prattling, but there is no occasion for it.”2 Along with Joseph, brothers Louis and Antoine have more documentation than the remaining three, and one of them appears to have only been mentioned as an afterthought, despite his far-ranging travels.

  Yet, a search of the indexes of any of the hundreds of books on the American West prior to the Civil War, written over the past one hundred years, is bound to turn up the name Robidoux. Hiram Martin Chittenden references the brothers in his seminal work, The American Fur Trade of the Far West. In Leroy Hafen's classic, multivolume history, The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Joseph, Antoine, and Louis have individual biographies. The noted Southwest historian David J. Weber features the Robidouxs as central characters in his book, The Taos Trappers, and any study that deals with the Chouteaus or the establishment of St. Louis as the base of operations for the American fur trade in the trans-Mississippi West, such at Jay Gitlin's recent work, The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion, cannot escape without a mention of the Robidoux family.

  The Brothers Robidoux operated all over the American West. Starting at St. Louis, the lower Missouri saw much business activity by the brothers. The upper Missouri saw less activity, but the brothers' influence can still be found there. In the area of the northern Great Plains, the brothers frequently did business along the Platte River Road as far west as Wyoming. The Mexican Southwest, centered at Santa Fe and including modern New Mexico, Arizona, parts of west Texas, and the region forming nearly the entire upper Rio Grande valley, saw much activity by the Robidouxs. Some of the brothers became quite prominent in New Mexico, not only in business, but also in local government, marrying into society, and going so far as to become citizens of Mexico. They traversed the intermountain region, which extended from the continental divide of the Rockies, west to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, including all or parts of Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. No fewer than five of the six brothers saw and worked in that region during their life, and some of them saw California. It became the permanent home of one brother, and through the accolades of another, the state attracted many American emigrants.

  The Brothers Robidoux worked primarily in the early western fur trade, but by no means exclusively committed all their time or energies to that business. They operated mercantile establishments from St. Louis to Council Bluffs to Santa Fe; bought, sold, and generally speculated in real estate; engaged in shipping and overland transport; farmed; and even bought into mining operations. Men involved in the fur trade are often depicted in American western history as loners, and that may have been true for the free-booting trappers who roamed the Rocky Mountains, disappearing for months at a time in search of the next great beaver stream. But, most, even though they may have preferred the solitude the West offered, engaged in multiple, intertwined relationships that proved absolutely necessary to the work they did. Despite the appearance, those relationships truly echoed the words of John Donne, who said, “No man is an island.”

  The first of these relationships involved nearly all the white men who ventured into the West and encountered the Native Americans. Throughout the two decades that marked the zenith of the American fur trade, roughly 1825 to 1845, the Indians ultimately controlled access to the pelts, either by doing the hunting, skinning, and transporting or by letting the white man travel their hunting grounds and do the work themselves. Frequently the relationship resembled a game of cat and mouse, with trappers and traders entering grounds that the Indians may or may not have considered off limits, to take a big cache of furs, and then hurriedly le
ave, barely escaping with their lives if the true landlords became even slightly displeased. Until the Civil War and the later subjugation of the western Indians, it remained in their hands as to whether the white man hunted or trapped successfully, or even lived or died.

  Next, there existed a passing relationship with the United States Government or with other foreign governments, Britain, Spain, and later Mexico. It is quite true that in the vast American West there existed no great bureaucratic network to keep track of everyone or to enforce the dictates made in the various capitals. But there existed a framework that everyone supposedly had to deal with, or more likely, worked to find a way around. From the beginning of the United States, everyone involved in the Indian fur trade had to have a license or work for someone who did. Those who obtained licenses were required to show they had at least the necessary financial resources, and knowledge of the laws, and what could or could not be traded with the Native Americans. Liquor and guns remained the biggest taboos, yet both routinely could be found in the hands of the Indians, exchanged for furs or access to furs. Personal scruples and the law frequently did not match. At times the Brothers Robidoux seemed to be as noble as saints; at other times and places they were absolute scoundrels.

  Everyone in the Indian fur trade had relationships with creditors. Paydays were never regular, as white trappers could be gone for months, and Indians bringing furs directly to trading posts frequently established credit accounts to tide them between visits, and later based their ability to pay on annuity payments from a treaty. No absolute certainty existed in the dealing of the West's greatest commodity. Bundles of furs or skins, from the labor of a whole year or season, could be lost or stolen. Canoes and bull boats capsized, buried caches could be ravaged by wolves or found by competitors or even gambled away after a bout with a jug of whiskey. Those in established posts along the Missouri River rarely paid cash up front for the trade goods they imported to barter with the Indians. Someone in St. Louis or New Orleans or even as far as New York put up stocks of goods or cash and kept accounts. The relationship with the creditor and one's ability to repay with consistency determined how long a man could stay in the field and actively trade. Creditors could also advance money to family members, particularly wives, left behind in the cities, to keep a roof over their head until the man returned from the field.

  The interpersonal relationships between a man and his immediate family, the Native Americans, and most frequently with his fellow trappers or traders represent a point often missed in the story of the solitary mountain men. It is quite true that married men, with wives and children, took to the field and left them in some distant town or farmstead, gone to the mountains for the better part of a year, to return briefly, deposit the earnings, and disappear again for another nine or ten months. Can that be chalked up to anything beyond personal preference or love of a lifestyle? Rarely, unless the man purposefully practiced a hermit's life, did they go without some interaction with fellow trappers and traders, if for only brief moments or encounters. Periodically, the trappers and traders had to come into the post, or later rendezvous to resupply, and cash in the furs and skins. There they renewed long-term acquaintances, did business, discovered new friends and creditors, or learned old friends had turned against them as competitors. And, sometimes, men who worked in the field far from civilization just needed to go back to places like St. Louis and rejoin the regular world. Some men seemed to depend on that kind of friendship, even more so than the formal family. Of course, others who left families ensconced in comfortable homes back East had complete second families in the West, frequently of Native American stock. Frontier polygamy with several Indian wives and half-breed children proved the norm for many. In the case of the Brothers Robidoux, nearly all of them at some point practiced the extended frontier family approach in their western careers.

  The list of contemporaries that the Brothers Robidoux met, knew, did business with, or competed against will be shown to be as astonishing as their exploits. Every giant of the American West prior to the Civil War crossed at some point either their path or threshold, ranging from the dynastic Chouteau clan to the likes of a Peg-Leg Smith or Kit Carson. Thousands more—trappers, traders, mountain men, trail blazers, emigrants, gold seekers, adventurers, pirates, merchants, farmers, town builders, Native Americans, and even African American slaves—did business with or were touched by them, as we shall see as their story unfolds.

  There are a number of people to thank for their assistance in preparing this work. I thank the staff of the Borham Library at the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith, especially the interlibrary loan specialist Sharon Freeman, reference librarian Carolyn Fillipelli, along with library technicians Joni Stine, Martha Coleman, and Patti Haberer. I deeply appreciate the help given by Dennis Northcroft at the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis for providing indexes and photocopying so many documents. Likewise, much appreciated is the assistance from the staff at the Huntington Library in California for sending Robidoux documents from the Ritch and Fort Sutter Collections and the New Mexico State Library for their loan of the microfilm for the Mexican Archives of New Mexico. A debt of gratitude is owed to Lilliana Sierra, who translated all the Spanish documents for me. Adam Nichols provided map graphics and other technical support, while many more good people on the campus of the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith encouraged and supported my research. Finally, thanks to my wife, Christine, and our wonderful children for their ongoing support.

  Genealogy of the Robidoux Brothers

  CHAPTER 1

  The Business of the Father

  Three dates, each twenty years apart, set the early timeframe for this biography of the Brothers Robidoux and the opening of the American West: 1763, 1783, and 1803. In 1763 the French and Indian War ended, and as part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France lost the land it called Louisiana. This vast territory encompassed the Mississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The lands west of the Mississippi River went to Spain (France actually ceding the land in November 1762), and the territory east of the river all the way to the Appalachians went to Great Britain. Prior to 1763, French occupation of Louisiana had been very limited, consisting of the main settlement at New Orleans and a handful of forts or trade outposts scattered along the banks of the Mississippi River. Furs, the primary fruit of the Indian trade, propelled the colonial economy. The year Spain received Louisiana, Pierre de Laclède Liguest, generally know as Laclède, came to New Orleans from France, seeking his fortune. Well educated, and a man of letters, he brought with him his two-hundred-volume library.1

  Laclède worked for a New Orleans merchant named Gilbert Maxent, a man he had served under during the French and Indian War and who had received from the French governor Jean Jacques D'Abbadie exclusive rights to trade along the western bank of the Mississippi and the Missouri River. Spanish administration did not arrive until 1766, so the French continued business as usual until it did. Laclède ascended the Mississippi in August 1763 accompanied by thirteen-year-old Auguste Chouteau, the son of the woman he lived with, one Marie Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau, whose husband, René Chouteau had abandoned her and their son in New Orleans. Laclède accepted Auguste as his stepson and employed him as a clerk. They temporarily stored their stock of trade goods at Fort Chartres on the Illinois side, and in December Laclède selected a site for a trading post on the west bank of the river. During February 1764, Chouteau and thirty workers began construction of cabins and supply houses. By April, a settlement took shape and Laclède decided to name the post in honor of Louis IX, the patron saint of the French king Louis XV. Before long, more substantial structures, French-style frame and stone houses, replaced the cabins. St. Louis transitioned from trading post to village to substantial colonial town in short order.2

  When the orders came for the French to evacuate the eastern bank of the Mississippi in April 1764, Laclède found people for his town without much recruiting. Arrivals from New Orleans included his
common-law wife, Marie Chouteau, Auguste's stepsiblings, brother Pierre, and sisters Pelagie, Marie Louise, and Victoire. They joined French settlers willing to cross the river to his new settlement on the west side, just below the confluence of the Missouri River. By December 1764, nearly fifty French families formed the population base of St. Louis. Whether they completely understood the circumstances of being subject to Spanish administration or not, they came to stay, joining St. Genevieve, as the two main French outposts in what later became the state of Missouri. When the Spanish did finally arrive in the spring of 1766, French Catholic culture remained much untouched, but the French found their old trade agreements canceled. Laclède's interest in the St. Louis post passed back to Maxent, through a foreclosure, but the stepson, Auguste, later bought out some of Maxent's holdings in the town.3

  To St. Louis came the father of the six Brothers Robidoux, migrating from Montreal, Quebec, via the Great Lakes, down the Illinois, and finally to the Mississippi. About twenty-one years old at the time, he traveled with his own father, both men named Joseph. In Canada they practiced the fur trade and other ventures, passing the business experience from father to son. The British occupation and administration of their newly won provinces in eastern Canada likely contributed to the Robidouxs' decision to move, that and the potential of finding a place to continue the fur trade in the French fashion, without new British regulation. Nearly all the French families at St. Louis had connections to the fur trade in some fashion, and while the region had excellent agricultural potential, as well as known mineral deposits to be mined, lead in particular, there remained a heavy emphasis on trading houses and plying the rivers of the upper Mississippi Valley in search of pelts. Grandfather Joseph bought town lots in St. Louis in April 1771 and by the end of the month had a house started.4