Fort Osage (also known as Fort Clark or Fort Sibley) was an early 19th-century

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

trading post A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded. Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...

run by the

United States Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...

in western Missouri on the

American frontier The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of United States territorial acquisitions, American expansion in mainland North Amer ...

; it was located in present-day

Sibley, Missouri Sibley is a village in Jackson County, Missouri, United States. The population was 357 at the 2010 census. It is known as the home of Fort Osage National Historic Landmark. It is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. History Sibley was plat ...

. The

Treaty of Fort Clark The Treaty of Fort Clark (also known as the Treaty with the Osage or the Osage Treaty) was signed at Fort Osage (then called Fort Clark) on November 10, 1808, (ratified on April 28, 1810) in which the Osage Nation ceded all the land east of th ...

, signed with certain members of the

Osage Nation The Osage Nation ( ) ( Osage: 𐓁𐒻 𐓂𐒼𐒰𐓇𐒼𐒰͘ ('), "People of the Middle Waters") is a Midwestern Native American tribe of the Great Plains. The tribe developed in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 700 BC along ...

in 1808, called for the United States to establish Fort Osage as a trading post and to protect the Osage from tribal enemies. It was one of three forts established by the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

to establish control over the newly acquired

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...

territories west of the Mississippi River.

Fort Madison Fort Madison is a city and a county seat of Lee County, Iowa, United States along with Keokuk. Of Iowa's 99 counties, Lee County is the only one with two county seats. The population was 10,270 at the time of the 2020 census. Located along the ...

in SE

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

was built to control trade and pacify Native Americans in the Upper Mississippi River region.

Fort Belle Fontaine Fort Belle Fontaine (formerly known as Cantonment Belle Fontaine) is a former U.S. military base located in St. Louis County, Missouri, across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers from Alton, Illinois. The fort was the first U.S. military install ...

, near

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, controlled the mouth of the Missouri at the Mississippi. Fort Osage ceased operations in the 1820s as the Osage in subsequent treaties had ceded the rest of their land in Missouri to the US. A replica of the fort was constructed on the site between 1948 and 1961. The Fort Osage school district (including

Fort Osage High School Fort Osage High School is a high school located at 2101 N. Twyman Rd. in unincorporated area, unincorporated Jackson County, Missouri, in the Kansas City metropolitan area, adjacent to Independence, Missouri, Independence. It belongs to the Fort ...

), which serves northeast

Independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

and the surrounding area, was named after it.

Background

During their famous expedition up the Missouri River in seeking the Northwest Passage to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, Americans Meriwether Lewis and

William Clark William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he grew up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Misso ...

noted this spot in June 1804, as they camped for the night just across the river:

high commanding position, more than 70 feet above high-water mark, and overlooking the river, which is here but of little depth...

In the same year

Pierre Chouteau Chouteau was the name of a highly successful, ethnically French fur-trading family based in Saint Louis, Missouri, which they helped found. Their ancestors Chouteau and Laclède initially settled in New Orleans. They then moved-up the Mississipp ...

, part of the

Chouteau Chouteau was the name of a highly successful, ethnically French fur-trading family based in Saint Louis, Missouri, which they helped found. Their ancestors Chouteau and Laclède initially settled in New Orleans. They then moved-up the Mississipp ...

fur trading family and an

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

for the Osage, took Osage chiefs to Washington, DC to meet President

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

who promised to build them a trading post. Previously Jefferson promoted his plan of expanding Federal trading posts on the frontier as means to remove the harmful influence of individual merchants by "undersell ngprivate traders" to make them withdraw from borderlands and "earn the good will of the Indians".

Foundation

William Clark led a team in September 1808 back to the site to begin construction of Fort Osage. In November 1808 Pierre Chouteau negotiated the

with certain members of the

, for the fort to be built for the protection of the Osage. The specific terms of the deal noted:

The United States being anxious to promote peace, friendship and intercourse with the Osage tribes, to afford them every assistance in their power, and to protect them from the insults and injuries of other tribes of Indians, situated near the settlements of the white people, have thought proper to build a fort on the right bank of the Missouri, a few miles above the Fire Prairie, and do agree to garrison the same with as many regular troops as the President of the United States may, from time to time, deem necessary for the protection of all orderly, friendly and well disposed Indians of the Great and Little Osage nations, who reside at this place, and who do strictly conform to, and pursue the counsels or admonitions of the President of the United States through his subordinate officers.

In exchange for access to the trading post, the attending Osage agreed to cede all of their lands east of the fort in

Louisiana Territory The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of the ...

to the US. This effectively left them with a small band of territory on the extreme western border of what is now the state of Missouri. The Great Osage were to receive $1,000 and the Little Osage were to get $500. The government trading post was established in 1808 and removed to Arrow Rock in 1813.

Operations

The fort was officially christened "Fort Osage" by Captain Eli Clemson; he commanded the military garrison at Fort Osage from 1808 until it was evacuated in 1813. It has also been informally referred to as "Fort Clark" in honor of

, who was in charge of Indian Affairs. It was one of the first United States military installations in Louisiana Territory and became a major stopping point for visitors traveling the Missouri.

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the we ...

was to visit it in 1814, at the age of 81, while on one of his last hunting trips. Sacagawea and her husband,

Toussaint Charbonneau Toussaint Charbonneau (March 20, 1767 – August 12, 1843) was a French-Canadian explorer, trader and a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He is also known as the husband of Sacagawea. Early years Charbonneau was born in Boucherv ...

, who had accompanied the

Lewis and Clark Expedition The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select gro ...

, also stayed at the fort on their way back north to Dakota Territory after time in St. Louis. Fort Osage was abandoned in June 1813 during the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...

because it was not considered to be under threat. Since most of the war's fighting was further east and north, the soldiers there were transferred to different locations. After the war the fort was reoccupied in 1815. Fort Osage was for many years a productive trading location, with the first

Factor Factor, a Latin word meaning "who/which acts", may refer to: Commerce * Factor (agent), a person who acts for, notably a mercantile and colonial agent * Factor (Scotland), a person or firm managing a Scottish estate * Factors of production, suc ...

George C. Sibley reporting prosperous trade with the Osage due to goods being sold "at prices less than half what the traders extort from them..."Isenberg, Andrew C. "''The Market Revolution in the Borderlands: George Champlin Sibley in Missouri and New Mexico, 1808-1826.''" Journal of the Early Republic 21, No. 3 (2001), pp. 445-465.

Abandonment

The end of the War of 1812 and the

Adams–Onís Treaty The Adams–Onís Treaty () of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty,Weeks, p.168. was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined t ...

removed the threat of Spanish or British-backed Indigenous campaigns against the United States throughout the Louisiana Purchase. As the Osage ceded more and more of their land, the US established a new trading post at Fort Scott, Kansas, closer to the ancestral villages near the headwaters of the

Osage River The Osage River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed May 31, 2011 tributary of the Missouri River in central Missouri in the United States. The eighth-largest river ...

near Nevada, Missouri. Fort Osage formally was closed in 1822, but remained a landmark on the

Santa Fe Trail The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, who departed from the Boonslick region along the Missouri River, th ...

and a transit point for supplies going north. By 1836 it had been obliterated; local settlers took its pre-cut wood to use for building houses and barns. The factory house was the last remaining structure, but it burned to the ground, leaving only the rock foundation.

Fort Osage National Historic Landmark

Archaeologists rediscovered the foundations of Fort Osage in the 1940s. The station was reconstructed to portray Fort Osage as it was in 1812 by using the preserved surveys created by William Clark and others. This made restoration to exact specifications possible. The rebuilt post has been designated as Fort Osage National Historic Landmark and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. It is owned and operated by Jackson County Parks and Recreation of Missouri. It is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 9:00am to 4:30pm year round. The Fort Osage Education Center, opened in November 2007, contains exhibits about the site's geology, 19th century natural history, the Hopewell and Osage native cultures, Lewis and Clark, Fort Osage, and the Missouri River. In addition, the location has living history demonstrations about early 19th-century military and civilian life.

References

External links

Fort Osage National Historic Landmark

Santa Fe Trail Research
{{authority control Osage Osage Nation 1808 establishments in the United States National Historic Landmarks in Missouri Kansas City metropolitan area Native American history of Missouri Natural history museums in Missouri Museums in Jackson County, Missouri Military and war museums in Missouri Osage Pre-statehood history of Missouri Trading posts in the United States Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Missouri National Register of Historic Places in Jackson County, Missouri