Fur Traders and Trail Blazers (Part II)
by Merrill J. Mattes
In 1833 Prince Maximilian of Wied, en route to Fort Union trading post on the steamer Yellowstone, observed this post. It was noted also by the Rev. Samuel Parker, en route from Liberty, Missouri to the mission at Belleview, Nebraska, where he started his marathon journey to Oregon. In 1853 also, the Iowa, Sac, and Fox Indians gave up immense tracts of land on both sides of the Missouri River, and Joseph III suddenly found himself with a gold mine in real estate. In 1843 he laid out the town of Black Snake Hills; in 1845 it metamorphosed into the town of Saint Joseph, in honor of this same Joseph “in accordance with the French Practice,” according to one source. However, another source I ran across recently suggests that the “Saint” part of the name was adopted as a kind of joke. Certainly there is ample evidence that Joseph was not a genuine saint; sharp practices were the norm among fur traders, and furthermore, Joseph owned black slaves, as did many other land-holding Missourians before the Civil War. At any rate, the budding hamlet which bore his name quickly became a big factor in the dwindling trade for furs and buffalo robes. In 1848 Swiss traveler Rudolph Kurz described the place as a trade emporium, a trans-shipping point, and a rendezvous of “mountaineers who dress themselves in cloths made of tanned deerskin, embroidered and fringed,” being stared at by the occasional Oregon-bound emigrant” as though they were bears.”
The California Gold Rush suddenly changed all that. Because of its strategic position as a steamboat port and transcontinental trailhead, the town was hit in 1849 by a human cyclone – the forty-niners.
To keep our perspective on the Robidoux family and its relationship to the westward migrations it is necessary here to back up to the year 1830, best known for the Smith-Jackson-Sublette expedition out of Saint Louis, which took the first wagons up the south side of the Platte River. Less well known is the expedition of that same year up the north side of the Platte, that of the American Fur Company out of Belleview, Nebraska, let by traders Lucien Fontanelle and Andrew Drips. A member of that expedition mentioned in the Warren Ferris journal, was one Robidoux. I agree with Paul Phillips, editor of that journal, that this was probably son Joseph IV or Joseph E., who then would have been in his prime at age 27. This younger Joseph Robidoux played a major role in the bitter rivalry between the American and Rocky Mountain fur companies; he was probably present in 1834 with Ferris as one of the first white men to behold the now famous Yellowstone geysers. More importantly, he was destined to play a stellar role in the gold rush – not as a gold-seeker or emigrant guide but as the most picturesque of the several Robidouxs at their famous trading post at Scotts Bluffs, the only such post in existence in 1849 in the 400 mile stretch between Forts Kearny and Laramie.
There is ample evidence that Joseph III set up several temporary trading posts at different points along the Upper Platte in the 1840s and 1850s, and that there were annual expeditions to these posts to take in supplies from Saint Joseph, and to return there with pelts and robes. Whiskey and trade goods were the main commodities going west, buffalo robes the main cargo returning. There is considerable testimony in emigrant journals about the east-bound Robidoux caravans, escorted by profane, piratical-looking crews, with creaking ox-carts, groaning under odoriferous piles of buffalo robes. This phenomenon was one of the more pungent items relieving the tedium of plains travel.
In the mid-forties sundry Robidouxs crop up here and there along the Oregon Trail but seldom with exact identification. The Aram train of 1846 was piloted by a Robidoux, who may or may not have been the same Robidoux whom Francis Partman met that year east of Scotts Bluffs who told him that “the Navajo in Santa Fe make glazed pottery and beautiful ponchos.” While brother Antoine would seem to be the logical suspect, it could hardly have been he, for he was either in or bound for California at the time with the Kearny expedition. In September 1847 Mormon pioneers returning from their exploration of the Great Salt Lake received some buffalo meat from two anonymous “Rubidoos” opposite Chimney Rock in western Nebraska.
We know that in the late 1840′s the Robidouxs had a trading post near the famous Fort John or Laramie of the American Fur Company, be we know nothing of its exact location. Oral Messmore Robidoux, the family biographer, says that for years Michel was a trader there, but it may be questioned whether Michel was involved any more than several others. In fact there is reason to think that the real “old-timer” Robidoux on the Upper Platte was the son, Joseph E., because emigrants report having been told by him while at Scotts Bluffs that he had been in that part of the country for many years.
It is clear that the Robidoux clan was a thorn in the side of the American Fur Company. On 24 May 1849 Bruce Husband, acting chief trader for Fort Laramie, wrote to his superior, Andrew Drips, that emigrants arriving at Ash Hollow were intercepted by a “Mr. Robidoux who, in the interest of bolstering his own business, warned the emigrants against the Fort Laramie traders as ‘all dammed rascals and cheats’.” In late 1848 there was foreknowledge of the 1849 gold rush and the probability that Fort Laramie would become an army post, surrounded by a proscribed military reservation. Accordingly, both the American Fur Company and the Robidouxs decided to shift their ground 50 miles east, to Scotts Bluffs, because of good timber and water supplies there. While the American Fur Company, with its headquarters in remote St. Louis, was still dithering around with indecision, the Robidouxs seized the initiative and got to Scotts Bluffs first, in the autumn of 1848, and picked out the choicest spot — the low pass through the curved chain of bluffs, where precious wood and water were in abundance. This Robidoux trading post, which was operated in 1849 and 1850 in a beautiful setting commanding a view of distant Chimney Rock to the east and Laramie Peak to the west, was on of the memorable highlights of the grueling westward journey.
