Great Plains Travel Series
By J. Daniel Rogers
The mosquitoes were glad to see us.
If you remember a few posts back Lotte wrote about her visit to Fort Union, North Dakota during a cold spell in late Winter, 2017. By way of contrast I thought it might be interesting to make a few further comments and share a few images of the visit Garry Rogers and I paid to the fort on June 6, 2018 as part of our travels across the Plains. My summer images of green prairie and leafy trees are a nice contrast to Lotte’s frozen pictures of winter splendor. I haven’t written sooner about this visit because I intended to stop at the fort yet again in the summer of 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it back to Fort Union—my route veered further to the west. I will mention some of the summer 2019 travels in a later post.
Fort Union was not a military fort. It was the headquarters of the Upper Missouri Outfit of the American Fur Company from 1828-1867. Perhaps the most striking thing about the landscape of Fort Union is that it sits on the edge of a low bluff along the meandering lowlands of the Missouri River. During the years the Fort was in use the river channel ran at the foot of the bluff, perhaps only 50 meters from the entrance. Today the channel has drifted several hundred meters south and left a marshland offering a remarkable habitat for wildlife, including swarms of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were glad to see us that day. During my undergraduate years, as part of my minor in zoology, I took a course on the various species of mosquitoes. It did not give me an appreciation for these insects. I have trouble saying anything good about the creatures, except that they are annoyingly resilient and persistent.
With the river to the south, about a mile to the north the rolling uplands take over from the level plain around the fort. It was on this plain that bands of Crow, Cree, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Hidatsa, Lakota, and others came in procession to trade at the fort and to pitch their teepees. Fort employees grazed their horses on this plain and occasionally chased bison. Famous Euro-American visitors at the fort included George Catlin, the painter, who visited in 1832 and went up to the low hills behind the fort to sketch and paint (Catlin 1973). The painter, Karl Bodmer, in the employ of Maximilian, prince of Wied-Neuwied, did the same, including painting several striking portraits of native visitors at the fort. On June 27th, 1833, Prince Maximilian described in his journal the arrival of an Assiniboine contingent of several hundred warriors, women, and children. The warriors sang and fired their guns in the air (Thwaites 1906). When the famous ornithologist, John James Audubon, visited in 1843 he spent several weeks at the fort describing the birds of the region (Harris 1951).
The comings and goings at Fort Union established it as a hub of commerce on the Plains. Like Bent’s Fort in present-day Colorado it was a place everyone visited. Even with many visitors day-to-day life at the fort must have been very routine, although, there were also momentous days full of danger and tragedy. One of those times was the smallpox epidemic of 1837, which so devastated the native tribes that it forever changed the history of the region. The contagion also impacted the inhabitants of the fort. Although a vaccine was known, none was available and no one present really know how to make it. Charles Larpenteur, leader at the fort, began an ill-fated inoculation program that simply spread the disease faster. The head of the American Fur Company was informed that “at Fort Union all was wretchedness and despair—the Prairies covered with dead bodies, and the whole atmosphere tainted...” (Coues 1898:382).
Fort Union in Summer, 2018
In calmer and happier times my brother and I visited Fort Union. On the northern Plains the winters are long and the summers are short and glorious. Except perhaps on reenactment days, no modern images can capture the life of the fort. I took a few shots around the fort, as any visitor would do. Some are similar to Lotte’s 2017 images (see the earlier post).
References/Further reading
Barbour, Barton H. 2001. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Catlin, George. 1973. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians: Written during Eight Years’ Travel (1832-1839) amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America. Edited by Marjorie Halpin.
Coues, Elliott, ed. 1898. Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri - The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur 1833 - 1872. New York: Francis P. Harper.
Harris, Edward. 1951. Up the Missouri with Audubon: The Journal of Edward Harris. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
Thompson, Erwin N. 2003. Fort Union Trading Post: Fur Trade Empire on the Upper Missouri. Williston, N.D.: Fort Union Association.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. 1906. “Travels in the Interior of North America by Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied.” In Early Western Travels, 1748-1846. Vol. 22–24. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark.