By Lotte Govaerts
(This post was originally written for The Rogers Archaeology Lab blog, though it never appeared there. Posts for that blog were written weeks, months, or occasionally years before they appeared. You can see the blog archived here.)
This post is part of my series on the historical archaeology of the Missouri Basin Project and the River Basin Surveys (RBS). Links to all previous posts in this series are included below. In this post, I examine the history and archaeology of site 39ST237, where Fort Pierre Chouteau, or Fort Pierre for short, operated from 1832 to 1855. The site is located in Fort Pierre, Stanley County, South Dakota.
Fort Pierre Chouteau was one of the more well-known forts of the Missouri River fur trade. The site of the fort is located outside the immediate Oahe Dam survey area and was therefore not investigated by RBS researchers beyond a brief visit in 1962. Because the site was not impacted by the construction of Oahe Dam or the filling of the lake, it was preserved and thoroughly investigated later. I did not include this site in my comparison of artifact assemblages from fur trade sites (I discuss that comparison in other posts, most recently here) because the excavation methods were too different from those of the Missouri Basin Project for a direct comparison. The well-documented research at this site constitutes an excellent reference for my research, however.
A Time of Change
In my previous post in this series, I discussed Fort Manuel and the early years of the US fur trade on the Upper Missouri. The story of Fort Pierre begins during the next chapter in that history and continues through the various changes of the next several decades.
Certain events occurred in the early 1820s that impacted the North American fur trade. North of the border in what is now Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company, which dominated the trade for centuries, was engaged in such intense competition with the North West Company that violence broke out on multiple occasions. The British government forced the two to merge in 1821 (Newell 1924). The merger led to downsizing and several long-time traders found themselves out of a job.[1]
Meanwhile, in the US, changes were afoot also. When it became an independent nation, the US set up a “factory” or government trading house system for trade with Indigenous peoples. In doing so, they followed the strategy of the European colonizing powers, who had been using trade to forge alliances with Indigenous populations to compete with the other colonizing powers. In this system, the government established trading houses (factories) where traders sold goods to Native peoples at cost. These posts were tools of diplomacy and empire rather than for-profit businesses (see Way 1919; Prucha 1970; Green 2012; Nichols 2016). Pressure from private traders to abolish the factory system increased over time, particularly through the efforts of the well-connected John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company (AFC). In 1822, the lobbying efforts of the private traders were successful, and the factory system was abolished. This left the US fur trade solely in the hands of private businesses (O’Connor 1948).
A new era dawned on the Upper Missouri in the 1820s, an area that did not yet have any factories before the system was abolished.[2] Canadian traders and colonists affected by the changes in the northern fur trade moved to St. Louis to set up new trade companies. One such group included Kenneth McKenzie, William Laidlaw, Joseph Renville, James Kipp, Daniel Lamont, Thomas Jeffries, and Honoré Picotte. Because they were not US citizens, they could not own or operate a fur trade company in the US. They solved this problem by aligning themselves with two Americans: William P. Tilton and S.S. Dudley (Very little is known of Dudley; I did not even see his first name mentioned in the literature). Together, they formed Tilton, Dudley, and Company, aka the Columbia Fur Company. This new company obtained a license to trade along the Missouri “as far north as the Mandans” as well as along the Mississippi and the St. Peters (Minnesota) to the Red River (Casler and Wood 2020, 83–84; 2017, 2). The Columbia Fur Company started out trading in Minnesota and expanded west from there, building Fort Washington on Lake Traverse and then Fort Tecumseh on the Missouri (mainly to trade with bands of Western Dakota and Lakota, who frequented the area), all in 1822. The latter fort quickly became the Columbia Fur Company’s main outpost (Casler and Wood 2017, 2; Schuler 1990, 12).
The new firm had plenty of competition in the area. Berthold, Chouteau, and Pratte (aka the French Company) built Fort Lookout to compete with Fort Tecumseh, though their fort was located over a hundred river miles downstream from Fort Tecumseh. In 1828, they built Fort Teton on the south bank of the Teton River, to be able to compete more directly. The Missouri Fur Company, which I discussed in my previous post, was also still active until 1824, under Joshua Pilcher and Thomas Hempstead. William Ashley and Andrew Henry’s fur trade forays took place in the early 1820s as well.
John Jacob Astor of the AFC also wanted to compete on the Missouri. He signed a contract with Berthold, Chouteau, and Pratte in 1822 (that company was renamed “Bernard Pratte and Company” the next year), who became the sole western agents for the AFC in 1826 (Barbour 2001, 15). The AFC also managed to negotiate a merger with the Columbia Fur Company, which became the Upper Missouri Outfit of the Western Department of the AFC in 1827 (Casler and Wood 2017, 3; 2020).
Astor retired in 1834 and sold the AFC. The Northern Department went to Ramsay Crooks, the Western Department to Bernard Pratte and Company, which was once again renamed, this time to Pratte, Chouteau, & Company and eventually, in 1839, to Pierre Chouteau Jr, & Company. That company remained the leading firm on the Upper Missouri, through all the changes of the 1830s and 40s and until the decline of the Upper Missouri fur trade in the 1850s and 60s.
History of the Fort
Fort Pierre is relatively well documented in the historical record, especially compared to smaller and/or more short-lived forts. During its time as a fur trade establishment, it was described and depicted by several of the same travelers I mentioned in previous blog posts in this series. As we will see, their interpretations vary somewhat, particularly when it comes to their estimates of the size of the fort. Some of the paperwork relating to the fort’s operation and later its sale to the military, have also been preserved. Historian Harlod H. Schuler became so intrigued by the fort’s history when he was writing his 1989 history of the towns of Pierre and Fort Pierre that he immediately followed up that work with a monograph on Fort Pierre Chouteau (1990), based on all this documentation. More recently, the journals and letters from Fort Tecumseh and Fort Pierre were published (Casler and Wood 2017).
The location of Fort Tecumseh, the Columbia Fur Company’s main base of operations, was not ideal and issues with riverbank erosion caused the company to abandon the fort for a new one. A site was selected for it in 1831, approximately two miles to the north. The new site was slightly higher on a level plain. Required features were access to water and wood, close proximity to the river to make the transportation of cargo as easy as possible, and access to grassland for grazing (Schuler 1990, 32). Construction of the new fort had begun by January 1831 (Schuler 1990, 33; Casler and Wood 2017, 35).
The AFC employees at Fort Tecumseh moved to Fort Pierre sometime in 1832, as letters were sent from there as early as June 1832 (Casler and Wood 2017, 93). The fort was named Fort Pierre Chouteau (or Fort Pierre) after then president of the Western Department of the AFC, Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Schuler 1990, 30) and was fully completed in 1833.
George Catlin (1796–1872), the American painter and author who traveled across the American west documenting its peoples and scenery, visited the fort in 1832. He described the surroundings of the fort in some detail and painted the scene.
“I am here living with, and enjoying the hospitality of a gentleman by the name of Laidlaw, a Scotchman, who is attached to the American Fur Company, and who, in company with Mr. M’Kenzie (of whom I have before spoken) and Lamont, has the whole agency of the Fur Company’s transactions in the regions of the Upper Missouri and the Rocky Mountains.
This gentleman has a finely-built Fort here, of two or three hundred feet square, enclosing eight or ten of their factories, houses and stores, in the midst of which he occupies spacious and comfortable apartments, which are well supplied with the comforts and luxuries of life and neatly and respectably conducted by a fine looking, modest, and dignified Sioux woman, the kind and affectionate mother of his little flock of pretty and interesting children.
This Fort is undoubtedly one of the most important and productive of the American Fur Company’s posts, being in the centre of the great Sioux country, drawing from all quarters an immense and almost incredible number of buffalo robes, which are carried to the New York and other Eastern markets, and sold at a great profit. This post is thirteen hundred miles above St. Louis, on the west bank of the Missouri, on a beautiful plain near the mouth of the Teton river which empties into the Missouri from the West, and the Fort has received the name of Fort Pierre, in compliment to Monsr. Pierre Chouteau, who is one of the partners in the Fur Company, residing in St. Louis; and to whose politeness I am indebted, as I have before mentioned, for my passage in the Company’s steamer, on her first voyage to the Yellow Stone; and whose urbane and gentlemanly society, I have before said, I had during my passage. The country about this Fort is almost entirely prairie, producing along the banks of the river and streams only, slight skirtings of timber. No site could have been selected more pleasing or more advantageous than this; the Fort is in the centre of one of the Missouri’s most beautiful plains, and hemmed in by a series of gracefully undulating, grass-covered hills, on all sides; rising like a series of terraces, to the summit level of the prairies, some three or four hundred feet in elevation, which then stretches off in an apparently boundless ocean of gracefully swelling waves and fields of green. On my way up the river I made a painting of this lovely spot, taken from the summit of the bluffs, a mile or two distant, shewing an encampment of Sioux, of six hundred tents or skin lodges, around the Fort, where they had concentated [sic] to make their spring trade; exchanging their furs and peltries for articles and luxuries of civilized manufactures.” (Catlin 1965 [1841], 208–209)
The next year, 1833, when the fort was fully finished, Prince Maximilian[4] and Swiss artist Karl Bodmer visited Fort Pierre. Maximilian described the fort thusly:
“Fort Pièrre is one of the most considerable settlements of the Fur Company on the Missouri, and forms a large quadrangle, surrounded by high pickets, round which the buildings stand in the manner already described. At the north-east and south-west corners there are block-houses, with embrasures, f, f, the fire of which commands the curtain; the upper story is adapted for small arms, and the lower for some cannon; each side of the quadrangle is 108 paces in length; the front and back, g, g, each 114 paces; the inner space eighty-seven paces in diameter. From the roof of the block-houses, which is surrounded with a gallery, there is a fine prospect over the prairie; and there is a flag-staff on the roof, on which the colours are hoisted. The timber for this fort was felled from forty to sixty miles up the river, and floated down, because none fit for the purpose was to be had in the neighbourhood. Mr. Laidlow’s [sic] dwellinghouse, d, d, consisted of one story only, but was very conveniently arranged, with large rooms, fire-places, and glass windows. Next to his house was a smaller building, e, for the office and the residence of a clerk. The other clerks, the interpreters for the different Indian nations, the engages and their families, altogether above 100 persons, lived in the other buildings, a, a, a, a. Opposite, in c, c, were the stores, at that time of the value of 80,000 dollars; and in the other rooms, the furs obtained from the Indians by barter. The fort has two large doors, g,g, opposite each other, which are shut in the evening; in b there was an enclosed piece of garden ground. The situation of the settlement is agreeable; the verdant prairie is very extensive, animated by herds of cattle and horses; of the latter, Fort Pièrre possessed 150, and of the former, thirty-six, which afforded a sufficient supply of milk and fresh butter.” (Thwaites 1904, 317–318)
As Schuler pointed out, Maximilian misidentified the corners of the fort that had the blockhouses (he said they were on the northeast and southwest corners, while they were actually on the northwest and southeast corners) (Schuler 1990, 36). Karl Bodmer depicted the fort in the surrounding landscape as well as various activities that took place in the vicinity.
Some remodeling took place over the course of the fort’s many years of operation, especially in 1843, as described by William Laidlaw in a letter dated September 8, 1843 (Schuler 1990, 37): “The new row of buildings lately put up at this place with six Doby chimneys in them, not only improve the appearance of the fort, but are very substantial buildings. A carpenter shop is also being built anew.” (William Laidlaw to Pierre Chouteau, Jr, 8 September 1843, quoted in Schuler 1990, 37)
John Palliser[5], who visited in October 1847, described Fort Pierre thusly:
“… we were by no means sorry to find ourselves comfortably installed in time for breakfast in the finest of the Fur Company’s Stations on the Missouri. In fact, Pierre is the largest fort belonging to the F.C.’s traders. It consists of a large space about 120 yards square, enclosed by piles of timber 24 feet high driven well into the ground. The roofs of the stores and trading houses are attached to two of the sides, with the stables, straw-yards, carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops, and a dairy… A flagstaff, gaily rigged, stands in the centre of the square…” (Palliser 1853, 103).
Thaddeus Culbertson[6], younger brother of Alexander Culbertson, visited in May 1850 and described the fort in some detail:
“I have for some time intended giving a description of Fort Pierre Chouteau and its environs but have postponed it from day to day for no reason whatever. A person coming up the country on the other side of the river has his first view of it about ½ mile below the fort and it then presents a most beautiful view. I thought the whole landscape there presented would have tempted any one skilled in drawing to take out his pencil and at once sketch it on paper.
The main object in the view was the fort itself, having a white appearance—lying four-square, surrounded by a square palisade wall 15 feet high and 500 feet on each side with bastions at the N.W. and S.E. corners; then the Indian lodges were seen around the fort, by their irregularity of position, their conical shape and varied colours giving life and a picturesque air to the scene and for a couple of miles below the fort and between it and the bluffs the whole plain was dotted with horses grazing and moving leisurely about, while the bold bluffs, a mile west of the fort afforded a fine background for the picture. The shores immediately opposite the fort are high bluffs almost from the waters edge, and with their steep barren, sandy sides look as if determined to wrap themselves up forever in the dignity of their own sterility. The main channel runs along this shore although at present there is a probability that the boat will be able to land at the fort. The fort is situated on a beautiful piece of bottom land which extends for some miles along the bank of the river and is skirted by a range of bluff hills on the west by which you rise to the rolling prairie beyond. This bottom land affords fine pasture and has a beautiful appearance when the grass and flowers are out on it, but the company pasture their horses on the Bad River about 8 miles from the fort, as the Indians always have so many horses here. But let me now introduce you to the inside of the fort; you perceive there are two large gates over each of which there is a large picture intended to represent scenes of interest to the Indian; we will enter by the one to your left, as the other leads to the stable yard and we will choose a dry day for our visit as on any other our shoes will suffer very much from the mud. A number of Indians, men & woman, with their robes or blankets wrapped around them, their bare legs, painted faces and curiously ornamented heads will probably be lounging in perfect listlessness about the gate, but don’t be afraid, they wont [sic] hurt you. The main building that you see opposite the gate and occupying nearly the whole length of that side, with a porch along its whole front, windows in the roof and a bell on top and above it the old weather cock, looking for all the world like a Dutch tavern – that is the main building containing the mess hall, kitchen and rooms for the traders; to the right of it you see a neat log house with a pleasant little portico in front and five [fine?] oil painted window blinds, – that is the boujier [Bourgeois] or boss’ house, and the long one storied building painted red and occupying almost the whole of the north side of the fort is the store and warehouse where the goods and robes are kept. To your immediate right as you enter the gate are the blacksmith shop and several rooms for the men and to your left is a small building containing the carpenter shop and a room for the men; nearly the whole south side is occupied by a low building divided into seven rooms occupied by the laborers and traders. These low houses are covered with dirt roofs: none of the houses are built against the fort walls, but behind them is a space of about 25 feet, and this is occupied in various ways. The north side has a house for the deposite [sic] of harness and implements of labor – the powder house- milk house for they have quite a good dairy – the stable and stable yard; the south side has two large buildings for their corn, meat, skins &c while the S: West corner is occupied by the office, a one story building ranging with the main building and having behind it a house occupied by one of the clerks and a yard in which the feathered tribe live and lay eggs. This arrangement of the buildings leaves quite a large fine square in the center from the middle of which rises generally a tall flag staff, but at present there is none as the last was blown down by the wind last summer.” (Culbertson 1952 [1850], 75–76)
Fort Pierre was sold to the US Army in 1855. Several descriptions and images were created during the negotiations for the sale. In his correspondence with the Army, Pierre Chouteau listed the size of the fort as 280×300 feet. A sketch of the fort was included with the following description:
“Enclosure 280 x 300 feet
Palisade 15 Feet high above ground
Bastions 24 Feet Square, Two Stories high
Houses No 1 & 2 are 24 Feet Square each with attics
Row of Houses No 3: 100 Feet front by 24 feet deep with attics
Row of Houses No 4: 90 Feet front by 24 feet deep with attics
Houses No 5 & 6 Each 40 Feet front by 24 deep containing Two rooms each
Row No 7 Store houses, 100 Feet front by 24 feet deep
Houses No 8 & 9 Store houses Each 24 feet Square
No 10 Stable Yard & Sheds
No. 12 Stable containing 40 Stalls
No 13 Hen House
No 14 Saw Mill Complete
Bank of Buildings No 3 is a Row of Houses used as Kitchens 40 feet by 20 deep
Open Space between Buildings 200 feet Square
No 15 Milk and Ice House
Powder Magazine”
(Record Group 94, Maps and Sketches, Fort Pierre Plan file, quoted in Fosha 2010, 22–23)
Documentation of the fort’s military period also exists: Lt. G.R. Warren made a map of the fort when he accompanied Harney’s 1855 expedition. Several other maps were created by the military that year. Alfred Sully, who was stationed at the fort (a Lieutenant at the time) created two watercolor paintings of the fort.
However, the Army found the condition of the fort such that they used portable cottages to house the troops instead. They decommissioned the fort in 1856 and sent all fort materials downstream to the location of their new post, Fort Randall. Fort Pierre was abandoned by 1857, although archaeological evidence shows that the military continued using the location. A ranch may have also occupied the site at a later date (Fosha 2010, 17–18).
Archaeological investigations
In 1980 and 1981, Steven Ruple of the South Dakota State Historical Preservation Center, State Archaeologist Dr. Robert Alex, and many volunteers with the South Dakota Archaeological Society conducted field work at the site of Fort Pierre (Ruple 1990, quoted in Fosha 2010a, 1).
In 1997–2001, the US Army Corps of Engineers also conducted a volunteer project at the site, the research design of which was incorporated into an overall management plan. The results of this investigation were published in great detail (Fosha 2010; Fosha and Haug 2010). In the first volume of the excavation report (Fosha 2010), the excavation itself is detailed, with an overview of all the identified features (89 of them).
In the second volume (Fosha and Haug 2010), a different artifact type is discussed in each chapter. These analyses include artifacts from the 1997–2001 season as well as the earlier excavation efforts at the site. As can be seen from the summaries of the various chapters below, the artifact assemblage from Fort Pierre is similar to that of other fur trade posts on the Upper Missouri.
Our colleague Bill Billeck analyzed the beads (glass, shell, and metal) from Fort Pierre in the first chapter (Billeck 2010). He reported that the vast majority of the 8,808 beads recovered from Fort Pierre (8,366, or 95%) were small heat-rounded drawn beads. Among the larger beads, white monochrome and blue monochrome spherical beads were most common. The Fort Pierre bead assemblage dates to 1832–1855. Billeck explained that blue and white are the most common colors in all available bead assemblages from the region in that time period (Fort Clark and Fort Union), but that differences can be noted in the numbers of the less common colors, likely due to the preferences of the trading populations at the different sites.
The next chapter deals with buttons (Collison 2010a). Collison analyzed 423 buttons from Fort Pierre and discussed their chronology, material, and function, as well as the locations where they were found. Twenty-eight of those 423 buttons likely date to the military occupation of the site, 13 date to the ranch occupation, and the rest (382) may be associated with the fur trade occupation. The assemblage includes 118 bone or horn buttons, 65 shell buttons, 186 metal buttons (72 identifiable as one-piece and 111 as two-piece metal buttons), 48 ceramic (“china” or “Prosser” buttons), two glass buttons, and four rubber buttons.
The chapter on firearms and related artifacts (Fox and Collison 2010) discusses gun parts, cartridge cases, shotshells, bullets, gunflints, primers, lead balls, shot, sprue, and a couple unidentified but likely related objects. These objects date to the three different occupation periods of the site (fur trade post, military fort, and ranch) and thus include flintlocks, percussion arms, and firearms that chambered self-contained, metallic ammunition.
The container glass assemblage from Fort Pierre is also discussed in its own chapter (Brothers et al. 2010). Diagnostic glass artifacts include fragments of alcohol bottles, medicine bottles, food containers, glassware, a complete ink bottle, and one other complete small bottle of unknown function.
The chapter on metal artifacts (Collison 2010b) discusses blacksmithing tools, blacksmithing scrap, logging-related artifacts, objects associated with hunting, fishing, and trapping, sewing tools, carpentry tools, construction materials, hardware, transportation-related objects, husbandry artifacts, domestic items, decorative items, and additionally a number of miscellaneous non-categorizable or unidentifiable metal objects.
A chapter on nails and other fasteners (Adams et al. 2010) distinguishes between cut nails, wrought nails, wire nails, horseshoe nails, screws, wrought pins, rivets, bolts, staples, and tacks. It concludes that the nail assemblage (excluding wire nails, which post-date the military occupation), indicate that the fort buildings were combinations of log, pole/post and planking, which is consistent with the documentary record.
Personal, trade, and decorative items are discussed in another chapter (Fox and Collison 2010b). This chapter discusses marbles, coins, locks (parts only), apparel fasteners other than buttons, pins and needles, insignia, ornamentation consisting of finger rings, setting stones, beads, metal ornaments, bone, shell, and tooth ornamentation, one thimble, earbobs (fragments), tinklers, writing materials, one comb, partial utensils, doll parts, footwear, other leather objects, and two unidentified plastic items.
Another chapter constitutes an analysis of clay smoking pipes from Fort Pierre (Fosha and MacDonald 2010). The assemblage includes two varieties of pipes: single-unit clay pipes (aka ball-clay pipes) (1432 fragments) and two-piece composite pipes (115). Pipe fragments were found at a higher density in two locations: the blacksmith shop and the area around the southeast bastion.
The penultimate chapter discusses all pre-fort occupation cultural materials excavated from the Fort Pierre site (Fosha 2010b). It concludes that the pre-fort component is most likely associated with the Proto-Historic Arikara Bad River phase of the Post-Contact Variant of the Coalescent Tradition in the Middle Missouri subregion (ca. 1650–1785).
The final chapter focuses on a very specific type of artifact: toothpicks (Collison 2010). It discusses possible toothpicks made from catfish spines, possible toothpicks made from bone comb teeth, and those made from cortical bone from unknown faunal origin.
At least some other, smaller scale archaeological investigations have taken place at the site of Fort Pierre Chouteau since the 1997–2001 excavations (Patton 2013) and more will likely follow in the future. As can be seen in the Historic Site marker illustrated above, the site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991.
This concludes my summary of the history and the archaeologist investigations of Fort Pierre. Next up in this series, a closer look at Fort Pierre’s successor, Fort Pierre II.
[1] See e.g. Odber 2012 for discussions on the effects of the merger.
[2] The 1824 Fur Trade Law (Eighteenth Congress, Sess. I, Ch. 146, 1824 Statute L, May 25, 1824) established regulations for trade with the tribes west of the Mississippi. The act appropriated $10,000 to defray the expenses of making treaties, authorized the President to appoint commissioners, two sub-agents for the Upper Missouri (with a salary of $800/year), assigned the Indian agents the duty to designate locations for trading posts, gave the superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis the powers and duties of territorial governors and supervision of Indian agents within his superintendency, and appropriated another $10,000 to assign military escorts for the commissioners appointed by the act, if needed.
[3] The National Archives website lists creation date of the image as 1855. That date may refer to correspondence between Pierre Chouteau Jr. and the military that included the image. Multiple other sources list the image creation date as 1854 (Schuler 1990, 40, fig. 11; Fosha 2010, 23, fig. 5).
[4] Prince Maximilian Alexander Philipp of Wied (1782–1867) was a German explorer and naturalist. He traveled to Brazil and the United States where he studied the flora and fauna, as well as the local Indigenous peoples. He traveled up the Missouri in the 1830s and later published an account of his travels (Thwaites 1906). He hired Swiss-born artist Karl Bodmer (1809–1893) to document this expedition.
[5] John Palliser was born into a wealthy family in 1817 in Dublin, Ireland. He enjoyed traveling and hunting and took a trip to the northern plains in 1847 to hunt and sightsee. He published a book about this experience in 1854, titled Solitary Rambles and Adventures of a Hunter in the Prairies. After becoming a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he went on a longer expedition, mainly through British territory, which resulted in several reports that are not entirely relevant to the present study.
[6] Thaddeus Culbertson (1823–1850) was the younger brother (technically half-brother) of Alexander Culbertson (1809–1878), who by 1850 had become a rather important figure in the Upper Missouri fur trade: He had joined the Upper Missouri Outfit in 1833 and was granted a share in the company six years later. He became the agent in charge of all the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone forts in 1848 and remained in that position for at least a decade. Alexander had collected some fossils in the Bad Lands sometime during the 1840s, which garnered enough interest that Thaddeus was invited to collect more from that region during a trip he had planned for his health (he had tuberculosis). Thus, Thaddus embarked on this journey in 1850. His journal was later published: first a partial publication in 1851, eventually a full publication in the Smithsonian’s Bulletin of American Ethnology (McDermot 1952).
References
Adams, Melissa E., Dutcher, Hilary G., Klein, Mandy M., Thomas, David, Fox, Richard A., 2010. Nails and Other Fasteners Assemblage from Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 345–439.
Barbour, Barton H., 2001. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Billeck, William T., 2010. Glass, Shell and Metal Beads at Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 1–100.
Brothers, Gregory, Dutcher, Hilary G., Feaster, Brandy, Magee, Rebecca, VanOtterloo, Melissa E., Fox, Richard A., 2010. Fort Pierre Chouteau Glass Assemblage, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 227–266.
Casler, Michael M., Wood, W. Raymond, 2017. Fort Tecumseh and Fort Pierre Chouteau: Journal and Letter Books, 1830-1850. South Dakota Historical Society Press.
Casler, Michael M., Wood, W. Raymond., 2020. The Rise and Fall of the Columbia Fur Company: Rethinking the Fur Trade on the Northern Great Plains, in: Casler, Michael M., Potter, Tracy (Eds.), Old Forts Never Die: The Middle Missouri Fur Trade, 1738-1850. The Proceedings of the 2018 National Fur Trade Symposium. Northern Plains National Heritage Area, pp. 77–128.
Catlin, George, 1965 [1841]. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North America Indians.
Collison, Patrick J., 2010a. Button Assemblage from Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael., Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 101–169.
Collison, Patrick J., 2010b. Forging the Fur Trade: Metal Artifacts at Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 267–344.
Collison, Patrick J., 2010c. Oral Tradition: Toothpick Use at Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 547–561.
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Fosha, Michael, 2010b. Pre-Fort Cultural Material from Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 517–546.
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Fox, Richard A., Collison, Patrick J., 2010b. Personal, Trade, and Decorative Items at Fort Pierre Chouteau, in: Fosha, Michael, Haug, James K. (Eds.), The 1997–2001 Excavations at Fort Pierre Chouteau Volume 2: Material Culture., South Dakota Historical Society Archaeological Research Center Research Report 3. South Dakota State Historical Society, pp. 441–485.
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Odber, Kirsten, 2012. Trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company: A Case Study of Nipigon House Post 1828 – 1838 (Master’s thesis). Lakehead University, Tunder Bay, Ontario.
Palliser, John, 1853. Solitary rambles and adventures of a hunter in the prairies. London : J. Murray.
Patton, Margaret M., 2013. Geophysical surveys and archaeological insights at Fort Pierre Chouteau, a frontier trading post on the Middle Missouri (Master’s thesis). University of Arkansas.
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Schuler, Harold H., 1987. A bridge apart: history of early Pierre and Fort Pierre. Pierre, S.D. : H.H. Schuler.
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Way, Royal B., 1919. The United States Factory System for Trading with the Indians, 1796-1822. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 6, 220–235. https://doi.org/10.2307/1889430
Previous posts in this series
What is Historical Archaeology?
How the River Basin Surveys Shaped Historical Archaeology
The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Fur Trade
The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Military Frontier
The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Indian Agencies
Lake Sakakawea and the Woman it was Named After
Garrison Dam Archaeology: Village Sites
Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32MN1 – Fort Floyd
Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML2 – Like-A-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold
Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML1 – Fort Stevenson
Oahe Dam Background: The Great Sioux Reservation
Oahe Dam Impacts: Cheyenne River Reservation
