Fur Traders & Missionaries
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The Fur Traders:
Joshua Pilcher

After Manuel Lisa died, the remaining partners signed a new contract, and Joshua Pilcher became the field representative in charge of the company's outposts and their fur traders. It was primarily through his efforts that the reorganized company enjoyed a degree of success. He was a merchant and banker in St. Louis, but had joined Lisa's company due to personal financial problems. He was a junior partner and served an apprenticeship as a trader among the Indian tribes in what was to become northeastern Nebraska.

From 1820 until at least 1824, Pilcher's primary base of operations on the Missouri was a trading post built by Manuel Lisa. The post is believed to have been about five miles southeast of present-day Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Shortly before the Lisa post was abandoned, newer quarters were built at Bellevue around 1822 or 1823 and became the field headquarters and trading post of the Missouri Fur Company under the direction of Pilcher.

Trade Goods
Trade goods recovered by archeologists from the Bellevue Trading Post site.
Source - NSHS.

The period of expansion and relative success for the company was abruptly ended during the summer of 1823 when one of the company's largest parties of fur trappers was attacked by a Blackfoot war party near Priors Fork on the Yellowstone River. Seven men were killed, Pilcher estimated that the company lost upward of $15,000 in goods and pelts. This battle plus another one with the Arikara at their village near the mouth of the Grand River in northern South Dakota, for all practical purposes, brought an end to the Missouri Fur Company. However, despite the reversals suffered by the company, it was not dissolved until the original contract expired in the fall of 1824.

Pilcher did manage to acquire a stock of goods valued at $3,175, but he was unable to compete with the newly emerging American Fur Company and found it necessary to divide the trade with John P. Cabanne, a representative for the American Company at Council Bluffs.