Fur Traders & Missionaries
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The Fur Traders:
Lucien Fontenelle

Lucien Fontenelle
Logan Fontenelle, son of Lucien
Source - NSHS, RG3653_5.

Lucien Fontenelle was son of a wealthy New Orleans family, but he had run away when he was a young boy. He became involved in the fur trade and later worked for the Missouri Fur Company at the Omaha villages in northeast Nebraska. He married an Omaha girl, Bright Sun, and his oldest son Logan became an Omaha chief.

Fontenelle and Pilcher formed a partnership with some other men in 1825 and they set out on a fur-trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains, but the venture was not profitable and the partnership was disbanded in 1828. Pilcher stayed in the mountains for three years and then replaced Cabanne as a representative of the American Company at Council Bluffs. Fontenelle purchased the Bellevue post.

When Fontenelle took possession of Bellevue, it was still primarily a trading establishment. With the disappearance of larger game animals such as deer and bison, it became necessary to produce domestic foods and farming became a necessity. Visitors were impressed with the size and quality of Bellevue's livestock and fields. Bellevue was one of the last outfitting stations and supply points along the Missouri River for fur trappers who were destined for the trapping grounds in the Rocky Mountains. The bison range, the next dependable source of food, was about a two-week journey from the Missouri River.

In 1832, Fontenelle sold his Bellevue station to the United States government for use as the headquarters of the Indian agent to the Omaha, Pawnee, Oto, and Missouri tribes, and he built a new home and trading post a few hundred yards down the Missouri River.

Lucien Fontenelle spent the last decade of his life operating the post and making yearly trips to the Rocky Mountains for the American Fur Company. On several occasions he spent the winter in the mountains and became acquainted with famous mountain men like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. But they were no more important or of any greater stature during the heyday of the fur trade than Lucien Fontenelle. He operated the post until his death in 1840.