The cover of Sunder's book.
The Fur Trade Era On The Upper Missouri
Cannonball River Part Of History, A
Review
By Dakota Wind
Cannonball, ND – The first edition of
John Sunder’s “The Fur Trade Era On The Upper Missouri, 1840-1865” was
published in 1965 by the University of Oklahoma Press. The book focuses on the
closing days of the American Fur Company on the Northern Great Plains which
effectively concluded with the punitive campaigns of generals Sibley and Sully.
The fur trade has an interesting history
in North America. The French and English hooked native peoples with trade goods
such as mirrors, knives, kettles, beads, and guns. American Indian tribes even
made war on one another for a hundred years in the Great Lakes region until the
beaver was effectively hunted out at the turn of 1700. Then the fur trade
turned west.
Sunder takes readers to the last of the
trading posts on the Upper Missouri, from Fort Berthold where the Arikara,
Hidatsa, and Mandan became utterly dependent on the US military for aid in
their struggle for survival against the elements and the hostilities of their
traditional enemies, the Teton Lakota, to Fort Union Trading Post.
Sunder’s narrative is a carefully
constructed study of the last trading posts. That is to say, that this book is
dry in its detail, but everything within is genuinely valued and included for
its contribution to the development of the American West. This includes
mentions of rivers and streams on the Upper Missouri River that have been
exploited for their material value, rivers and streams that were inter-tribal conflict
sites, and river and streams that have served as important points of interest
for river traffic.
Here’s a short excerpt from Sunder’s The Fur Trade Era On The Upper Missouri,
1840-1865 which happens to pertain to the Cannonball River, a western
tributary of the Missouri River, and of some interest to the energy industry.
After
brief stops at Forts Buford and Union, the St. Ange reached the mouth of the
Poplar River. Since the mid-July channel of the Missouri was too low to allow
Captain La Barge to go up-river beyond that point, he unloaded freight destined
for the Blackfoot country, then swung the steamer around and rode the current
downriver to St. Louis, carrying a large cargo of robes and furs and new Indian-country
curiosities: spherical stones from Cannonball River and a caged wild songbird
resembling an Old World finch. Father De Smet, who disembarked at Fort Union,
accompanied Alexander Culbertson and thirty Indians in a small wagon and cart
train overland from Yellowstone to Fort Laramie to attend a scheduled September
meeting between St. Louis Indian Superintendent Mitchell and the northern
Plains tribes.
These spherical stones, concretions, from
the 60-million-year-old Cannonball Formation – unique to North Dakota –
continue to be a part of North Dakota’s identity and geologic history, so much that a lovely collection of the stones are prominently featured at the new east
entrance of the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The stones were collected from Harmon Lake recreation area. There's precious few stones remaining at the Cannonball River.
Sunder’s book is available at the NorthDakota Heritage Center & State Museum’s gift shop. The book is not listed for purchase on the website, but it's on the floor. Get your copy today!
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