St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 1:
Valley of Plenty, River of Conflict (continued)

The American Fur Company Era

During first half of the nineteenth century competition between more and more fur traders for fewer and fewer furs threatened to make the figure of the fur trader an endangered species. This competition gave the Chippewa and the Dakota higher prices for their furs and a greater choice of goods for which to trade. It also reduced to the lowest common denominator of behavior an exchange that had persisted for well over one hundred years as a middle ground between Indians and Europeans. Family alliances between traders and hunters became less common as both sides operated with an eye for immediate returns, the trader in the form of quick profits, the Indians in form of alcohol. The rivalry between the Northwest Company and the X Y Company had been ruinous to both parties. To try preventing another outbreak of that type of trade war the Canadian based fur traders pooled their resources in the form of a new concern, which would have a monopoly on the fur trade south of the Great Lakes. First the Michilimackinac Company and later the Southwest Company were organized to control the fur trade of the Upper Midwest. The latter company is known to have operated a post on the St. Croix. Neither company succeeded long because increasingly the main competition came not from Canada but from the United States. In 1808 the American Fur Company was charted by the state of New York. Its founder, John Jacob Astor sought to dominate the fur trade in American territory the way the Northwest Company controlled the Canadian trade. After the War of 1812, when the authority of the United States government was firmly established in the region, Astor got his chance. [61]

As the Americans moved to assume the fur trade of the St. Croix they adopted the same tactic as the British a generation before. British traders like Alexander Henry formed partnerships with experienced French traders, such as Jean Baptiste Cadotte, Sr., to benefit from their superior connections with the Indians. Astor's American Fur Company followed the same pattern. Their choice to head the St. Croix trading area was Joseph Duchene, known to everyone in the region by his nickname, "La Prairie." He had been the Northwest Company's most experienced trader in the Folle Avoine. His son of the same name who became an interpreter joined him in the American Fur Company. William Morrison who had come to the region as a boy and had matured into an experienced trader, also left the Northwest Company and was rewarded by Astor with overall control of the Fond du Lac Department, a vast area that included the St. Croix, Chippewa, and Upper Mississippi valleys. The Cadotte family, long an aristocracy in the Lake Superior trade was among the first to make the move toward the Americans. In 1818 Michel Cadotte employed two young Americans to act as front men for his operations in the northwestern Wisconsin. Truman and Lyman Warren, the sons of a revolutionary war soldier, eventually married Cadotte's daughters. They gradually earned the trust and support of not only Cadotte, but of the family's Chippewa kinsmen. In 1822, Cadotte and the Warrens entered the American Fur Company as traders in the Fond du Lac Department. Also entering the firm were another generation of the Cadotte clan, Michel, Jr. who signed on as an interpreter, and Jean Baptiste the III, who joined as a boatman assigned to the St. Croix outfit. [62]

By winning the cooperation of the most experienced traders in the region the American Fur Company secured the bulk of the trade of the St. Croix valley. The principle trading posts within the valley continued to be among the Chippewa of the Snake River and in the Yellow Lake region. Under Astor's company the Chippewa in the valley continued to be supplied and directed from Lake Superior, which mandated a continuation of the virtual alliance between fur traders and the Chippewa bands of the Upper St. Croix. The Dakota villages along the lower river had no contact with those fur traders and they directed their furs toward merchants operating on the Minnesota or Upper Mississippi rivers. Among the traders to winter on the lower St. Croix and trade with the Dakota was Jean Baptiste Mayrand, a fur trader based in Prairie du Chien. Mayrand operated a St. Croix post during the winter of 1819-1820 and probably for a longer period. Mayrand, like Cadotte and Warren on the upper river, was attached to the American Fur Company. Between the efforts of these men the American Fur Company was in a position to secure the bulk of the furs from the St. Croix. [63]

Figure 8. Chippewa women gathering wild rice, painting by Seth Eastman, c. 1857. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries fur traders were dependent upon the Chippewa or Dakota to supply the bulk of their winter provisions.