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9 unusual facts about American Fur Company


1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic

The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was believed to have begun in the spring of 1837 when a deckhand became ill aboard an American Fur Company steamboat, the S.S. St. Peter.

Alfred Jacob Miller

That same year, along with representatives of the American Fur Company, they ventured as far as Fort William and Green River.

American Fur Company

The Midwestern outfit continued to be called the American Fur Company, and was led by Ramsay Crooks.

French people in Nebraska

In 1824 Jean-Pierre Cabanné established Cabanne's Trading Post for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company near Fort Lisa, at the confluence of Ponca Creek and the Missouri River.

George Ronan

On the North American Great Lakes, the years immediately prior to the breakout of the War of 1812 were characterized by increasingly embittered competition between British-Canadian fur traders and American merchants, including traders aligned with the interest of the powerful John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company.

Lawrence Taliaferro

His role was to mediate between the American Fur Company traders, the Ojibwa and Dakota Indians in the area, and United States interests.

Michel Brisbois

Built in 1815, the Michel Brisbois House served as a trading post and warehouse of the American Fur Company.

Rudolf Friedrich Kurz

Eventually, after four years of struggle to pay board and lodging he met Alexander Culbertson in Council Bluffs, in June 1851 and embarked the steamer St. Ange to Fort Fort Berthold work for the American Fur Company.

Walhalla, North Dakota

In town is the Kittson Trading Post, established by Norman Kittson, an American Fur Company agent, in 1843.


Grandfather Falls

These derive from voyageurs working for John Baptiste DuBay, who ran a trading post for the John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company near Fort Winnebago, and built a pioneering trading post and homestead near Knowlton.

Mendota, Minnesota

It also houses a small museum which used to be the Hypolite Du Puis house, the Henry Hastings Sibley house, the Faribault house, and buildings associated with the American Fur Company, all dating from the 1830s.

Pierre Bonga

He entered the fur trade in the region, working for the North West Company, based in British Canada, and later for the American Fur Company of John Jacob Astor, as well as others in the area.

Pierre Bonga (Mukdaweos) (b.c. 1770s) was a black (African-American) trapper and interpreter for the North West Company, based in Canada, and later for John Jacob Astor's the American Fur Company, working primarily along the Red River of the North and near Lake Superior in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota.


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Antoine Godin

Initially there was no alarm, for this group was assumed to be an American Fur Company supply train led by Lucien Fontenelle, which had failed to arrive in time for the rendezvous.

Jean Joseph Rolette

Then in 1842 the American Fur Company declared bankruptcy, and in order to continue in the trade Rolette entered into a joint venture with Dousman, Henry Hastings Sibley, and Pierre Chouteau to organize a new company which would take its place on the upper Mississippi.