Columbia Fur Company was a fur trading and Indian trading business active from 1821 to 1827, in Michigan Territory and in the unorganized territory of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It then became the Upper Missouri Outfit of the American Fur Company.

Formation

The company was founded in 1821, when the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

and the North West Company merged, and a large number of fur traders found themselves out of job. The founders, Joseph Renville, Kenneth McKenzie, William Laidlaw and Daniel Lamont were all British subjects, so they arranged for the company's activities to be officially carried out by William P. Tilton & Co., a New York company operating out of Saint Louis.Chittenden 1902, vol. 1, pp. 323-325.Jones 1966, pp. 107-108.

Operations

The company opened four trading posts at the Minnesota River in competition with the American Fur Company. Trading posts were also built at

Lake Traverse Lake Traverse is the southernmost body of water in the Hudson Bay watershed of North America. It lies along the border between the U.S. states of Minnesota and South Dakota. A low continental divide, part of the Laurentian Divide, separates t ...

and at Green Bay. Barbour 2001, p. 11. Soon, however, the operations were extended to the West. In 1823, the company built a trading post, Fort Tilton, by the

Mandan The Mandan are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still re ...

villages on the Missouri River. The company eagerly participated in the trade with the Sioux and the

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enr ...

on the

Northern Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and ...

. In competition with Pierre Chouteau Jr. and other fur traders from Saint Louis, the company built several trading posts on the Missouri River extending its trade to the

Ponca The Ponca ( Páⁿka iyé: Páⁿka or Ppáⁿkka pronounced ) are a Midwestern Native American tribe of the Dhegihan branch of the Siouan language group. There are two federally recognized Ponca tribes: the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and the Ponca ...

and Omaha trade. The axle of the trade was Fort Tecumseh built where the Teton River merges with the Missouri. The company's posts were supplied from its headquarters at Lake Traverse.

Dissolution

The company was bought by

John Jacob Astor John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by History of opium in China, smuggl ...

in 1827, and reorganized as the Upper Missouri Outfit of the Western Department of the American Fur Company, withdrawing its operations on the Great Lakes and leaving it to the Northern Department of the American Fur Company. Pierre Chouteau Jr. became the chief executive of the Western Department, while Kenneth McKenzie became manager of the Upper Missouri Outfit, operating above the mouth of the

Big Sioux River The Big Sioux River is a tributary of the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota and northwestern Iowa in the United States. It flows generally southwardly for ,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataTh ...

. McKenzie built Fort Union at the mouth of the

Yellowstone River The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long, in the Western United States. Considered the principal tributary of upper Missouri, via its own tributaries it drains an area with headwaters across the mountains a ...

as the Outfit's center of operations.

Trading posts

* Fort Floyd 1826 * Fort Lookout 1822, near

Fort Kiowa Fort Kiowa, officially Fort Lookout and also called Fort Brazeau/Brasseaux,Lotte Govaerts, "Real Stories behind The Revenant, Part III: Fort Kiowa", Rogers Archaeology Lab/ref> was a 19th-century fur trading post located on the Missouri River bet ...

. * Fort Tecumseh 1822 * Ponca Post, near Nanza just below the mouth of the

Niobrara River The Niobrara River (; oma, Ní Ubthátha khe, , literally "water spread-out horizontal-the" or "The Wide-Spreading Water") is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. Many early settlers, such as Mari Sando ...

. * Tilton's Post or Tilton's Fort, built in 1822 on the opposite site of the Missouri from the Mandan villages. In 1823 the post was moved to the villages, to get protection from

Arikara Arikara (), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011)

attacks.Chittenden 1902, vol. 3, p. 957. * Post at the mouth of White Earth River, 1825-1831. Replaced by Fort Clark. When Columbia Fur Company sold out to Astor in 1827, the following posts were included in the deal:Chittenden 1902, vol. 3, p. 965. * Council Bluff *

Vermillion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color, color family, and pigment most often made, since antiquity until the 19th century, from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide, which is toxic) and its corresponding color. It is v ...

* Rivière à Jacques * Ponca Post * Fort Tecumseh * Mandan Villages

References

Notes

Cited literature

* Barbour, Barton H. (2001). ''Fort Union and the upper Missouri fur trade .'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. * Chittenden, Hiram Martin (1902). ''The American Fur Trade of the Far West.'' New York: Francis P. Harper. * Jones, Evans (1966). ''Citadel in the Wilderness.'' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. * Robertson, Roland G. (1999). ''Competitive Struggle: America's Western Fur Trading Posts, 1764-1865.'' Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press. * Wishart, David J. (1979). ''The Fur Trade of the American West 1807-1840.'' University of Nebraska Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Columbia Fur Company American Fur Company Defunct companies based in Missouri American companies established in 1822 Companies disestablished in 1827 1822 establishments in Missouri 1827 disestablishments in Missouri