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FORT UNION
AND THE UPPER MISSOURI
FUR TRADE

 Barton H. Barbour

University of Oklahoma Press
Norman, OK  2001

240 pages
List Price: $34.95

Amazon.com: $24.46
When you buy it from Amazon.com WMSA gets a cut

Book review
by Kevin L. Jamison, Esq.

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          The author has created a vibrant portrait of the earliest American trading post on the upper Missouri, in what is now western North Dakota, from 1829 to 1869.  The author recounts the techniques which went into the fort's construction, and the people it served over four decades.  In the telling, he recounts the various demographic groups in the area, the Indians, the artists, the traders, the trappers, the clerks, and the soldiers.  He also outlines American Indian policy, policies, and lack of policy in the period leading to the Plains Indian Wars.

          While called a fort, Ft. Union only occasionally served soldiers.  It served private enterprise, and served it well.  Despite small trading companies looking for short term profits, the dominate American Fur Company had a vested interest in leaving the Indians alone to hunt as they pleased, and treating them fairly, finding them canny traders.

          The author details the laws the fort's residents lived under, those attempting to govern the Indian trade, and those the residents chose to govern themselves.  Despite being on the frontier for its entire history the fort was considered safer than eastern cities.  The balance of terror between the walking arsenals who populated the fort, and need for mutual cooperation worked against the Hollywood frontier violence.  Only twice in four decades were area residents "outlawed" in the Old English sense by community consent.  This status was essentially an open contract on their lives, a contract satisfied by sending them out of the country whenever possible.

          The rich historical detail of the work makes it invaluable for scholars of the frontier and Indian history. 

br-ftunion.htm 08/28/2001