The Adventures of John Colter

Part 2: The Second Round Trip

So it's 1806, John Colter is with the Corps of Discovery on their return trip, and they've just passed the confluence of the Yellowstone River with the Missouri River [1]. They meet up with fur trappers Forest Hancock and Joseph Dickson on their way upstream, they persuade Colter to join them, so he turns around and travels with them as far as the Three Forks of the Missouri [2]. There they start trapping beaver, but it only takes two months before Hancock and Dickson realize that they can't get along at all, so the partnership dissolves and Colter turns around to head for home. Again.

It's 1807 and he's reached the confluence of the Platte River with the Missouri River (near present-day Omaha) [3], where he meets up with an expedition headed by Manuel Lisa who are traveling from St. Louis [4] upstream towards the Rocky Mountains. Manuel Lisa's group includes several former members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Lisa persuades Colter to join them, so he turns around and travels with them back upstream.

You might be wondering who Manuel Lisa was, and what kind of town St. Louis was in those days.

Frontier-Era St. Louis

At the beginning of the 1800s, St. Louis was an international trade center. From the Missouri River drainage came beaver pelts, and goods imported from across the Atlantic were brought overland or up the Mississippi. French fur traders by the name of Auguste Chouteau and Pierre Chouteau had monopolized the import business until the Spaniard Manuel Lisa came to town in 1798 from New Orleans. His ability to establish an independent enterprise was aided by some generous land grants from the Spanish governors of the territory.

It was from the Chouteaus and Lisa that Meriwether Lewis had to acquire supplies for the expedition while spending the winter of 1803-1804 in St. Louis. By that time, Manuel Lisa had established preeminence in the St. Louis fur trade, and had been granted a monopoly on fur commerce with the Osage Nation by the Spanish government. When the expedition returned in 1806, Lisa was best positioned to capitalize on their reports of abundant beaver in the Upper Missouri River territory.

Beginning in 1807, Lisa organized annual fur-gathering expeditions to that region, and it was on the first such venture that he crossed paths with John Colter near the Platte River.