Fur Trading Companies on the American Frontier

Fur Trade Companies - Page 2

Missouri Fur Company (1808-12, 1819-24) - In the Spring of 1807, Manuel Lisa organized an expedition up the Missouri River with 50-60 men who built Fort Raymond at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Big Horn Rivers in present-day Montana. After thoroughly working the area and obtaining thousands of pelts, they returned to St. Louis. He then formed the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company in the winter of 1808-09 along with several partners including Pierre Choteau, Sr., Auguste Choteau, Jr., Andrew Henry, Pierre Menard, Benjamin Wilkinson, Reuben Lewis, William Clark, Sylvestre Labbadie, and William Morrison.

The first expedition of the newly formed company was for Louisiana Territory Governor, Meriwether Lewis, to return a Mandan Indian to his people in the spring of 1809.

Upon successfully completing this mission, they prepared for a second expedition that included 13 river craft to travel up the Missouri River, first headed towards Fort Mandan in North Dakota. The company then began to establish a number of forts along the Missouri and Nebraska Rivers, trading with the Sioux, Ricara, Mandan and Blackfoot Indians.

Manuel Lisa founded the St. Louis Missouri Fur

Trading Company, which later became simply the

Missouri Fur Company.

The thousands of pelts collected by the company were periodically returned to St. Louis, Missouri, where William Clark served as the agent of the company. The War of 1812 created difficulties for the St. Louis Fur Company and they were forced out of the dangerous Dakota country. The partnership was dissolved the same year. However, in 1819, it was reorganized under the name of the Missouri Fur Company with partners Manuel Lisa, Thomas Hempstead, Andrew Woods, Joseph Perkins, Joshua Pilcher, Moses B. Carson and John Zenoni.

Manuel Lisa and his wife returned to Fort Lisa near Omaha, Nebraska, while Joshua Pilcher moved from camp to camp trading with the Indians. When Pilcher returned to Fort Lisa, he found Manuel Lisa in poor health. Lisa died on August 12, 1820. Afterwards, Thomas Hempstead served as the business manager, based in St. Louis, Missouri. However, the fur trade was becoming unstable, and when two of their posts were robbed by an Arikara war party, their debts began to mount. However, the company persevered and soon penetrated further west, building Fort Benton in Montana and trading with the Crow tribe.

Competition with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company increased, placing the company in even more financial difficulty. By this time, the company also included William H. Vanderburgh, Lucien Fontenelle and Andrew Drips, and in one year alone, they sent out nearly 300 traders who accumulated $42,000 in furs.

But, it wouldn’t be enough. On May 31, 1823, a large Blackfoot war party ambushed Pilcher's men, killing seven of them and wounding four others. Their traps, pack horses and pelts were stolen Resulting in a loss of about $15,000, Joshua Pilcher pulled his men back from the Northwest, but the ambush caused a death blow for the company. They never returned to the northwest and by the spring of 1824, the Missouri Fur Company was bankrupt.

North West Company (1779-1821)

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, the organization was first established in 1779, but for the for the first four years, it was little more than a loose association of a few Montreal merchants. However, in 1783, in attempt to break the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, they "officially” organized, led by businessmen Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and Simon McTavish, along with investor-partners -- Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, Patrick Small, William Holmes and George McBeath.

The North West Company established Fort Walla Walla, Washington in 1818.

Competing heavily with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company, they merged with the Gregory, McLeod and Co. in 1787. Soon afterwards, Roderick Mackenzie and his cousin, Alexander Mackenzie joined the expanded operation with Alexander Mackenzie overseeing the exploration of the western territories.

The company originally confined operations to the Lake Superior region and the valleys of the Red, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan Rivers but, later spread north and west to the shores of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. In Oregon Country, they constructed posts in present-day Washington and Idaho. Their wilderness headquarters was first located at Grand Portage on Lake Superior, but after 1805, they headquartered at Fort William, located at the present-day city of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

The profits of the fur trade were large which caused much tension between the the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, so much so that several minor armed skirmishes erupted. The competition became especially intense when the Hudson’s Bay Company established the colony of Assiniboia on the Red River in present-day Manitoba in 1811–12. A few years later, open conflict broke out, during which North West Company men destroyed the Red River colony in 1816, in what became known as the Seven Oaks Massacre. The Hudson's Bay Company retaliated by destroying the North West Company post of Fort Gibraltar, located in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, and captured Fort William. Over the next several years, some of the wealthiest and most capable partners began to leave the company.

Under pressure from the British government, the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company were merged in July, 1821 and the North West Company ceased to exist.

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