Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Outpost on the Missouri River

Upper Missouri tribes had a traditional trade system in place for centuries. Plains tribes traveled throughout the area of the confluence of the Missouri River and Yellowstone River in search of buffalo, elk, and other animals that provided them with subsistence. This area was traditionally Assiniboine (uh-SIN-uh-boin), but other tribes made contact in the area too. The Assiniboine, Blackfeet, Crow, Cree, Ojibway, Hidatsa, and Mandan traded buffalo robes, meat, corn, beans, squash, and other materials that belonged in their world. As Euro-Americans came into their area, trade for European goods attracted their interest. Fort Union Trading Post was established to meet this growing demand and to help manage the fur trade.

Interaction between the white traders and tribes during trade sessions was very ceremonial in nature. Sharing gifts, smoking traditional pipes, and speeches were all done according to tribal custom. Tribal chiefs and leading warriors negotiated with traders to obtain the best possible trade goods for their people. Buffalo robes, beaver pelts, and other furs were traded in exchange for guns, pots, beads, knives, blankets, cloth, and other items of value to the tribes.

The Fur Trade

The exchange of buffalo robes and furs for trade goods cemented a complementary relationship between fur traders and Indian tribes centered at Fort Union. In the trade exchange, each culture brought something of value to the other. The goods the tribes received allowed them to dominate their environment more effectively. Traders were able to sell robes and furs to a growing population back East and to European fur markets.

Economic exchange between the traders and tribes soon became social. Intermarriage, adoption, and participation in tribal ceremonies became an active part of the white trader’s existence. Traders married Indian women for companionship, to cement business transactions, and because no white women lived on the upper Missouri. By the 1850s many second-generation fur trade employees were of mixed-blood (Metis) descent.

In these trade exchanges, each culture felt it was superior to the other. Traders were comfortable in their superior technology. Indians thought whites valued robes and furs too highly and believed that they (not the whites) easily got the best of the exchange.

In a broad sense, the fur trade on the upper Missouri represented a snapshot in time: a time when there was a balance between the two cultures. The traders did not try to restrict the Indian way of life and force them onto reservations. Instead, traders sought to take advantage of what Indian people were doing already – producing brain-tanned buffalo robes and furs for their own use. This snapshot lasted for 60 years on the upper Missouri, from the return of Lewis and Clark in 1806 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. For 39 years, 1828-1867, Fort Union dominated the fur trade. The balance between cultures shifted when vast numbers of whites began moving west during the Civil War, forcing the traders out of business and eventually restricting the tribes to reservations.