Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839 [Paperback]

F. A. Chardon (Author), Annie Heloise Abel (Editor), William R. Swagerty (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 1997

Thirty years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota, the Upper Missouri River region was being plied by fur traders. In 1834 Francis A. Chardon, a Philadelphian of French extraction, took charge of Fort Clark, a main post of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri.

 

The journal that Chardon began that year offers a rare glimpse of daily life among the Mandan Indians, including the Arikaras, Yanktons, and Gros Ventres. In particular, it is a valuable and graphic record of the smallpox scourge that nearly destroyed the Mandans in 1837. Chardon describes much of historical interest, including such figures as the interpreter Charbonneau, Sacajawea’s husband, and the fantastic James Dickson, “Liberator of all the Indians.” By the time his account ends in 1839, the fur trade is already in decline.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chardon’s journal was long lost, rediscovered, and finally edited and published in 1932 by Annie Heloise Abel, a distinguished scholar whose works, all available as Bison Books, included The American Indian As Slaveholder and Secessionist; The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862–1865; and The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863–1866. Her historical introduction provides background on the fur trade and on Chardon’s life before and after his tenure at Fort Clark. William R. Swagerty is a history professor at the University of Idaho.

Product Details

• Paperback: 458 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; First Edition edition (February 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803263759
• ISBN-13: 978-0803263758
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT, November 4, 2011

By 

Kay's Husband (Virginia, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839 (Paperback)

If you are a reader on the west, mid to later mountain man years, concerning the time period of 1830 to 1839, interested in a key trading post, then this book just might be for you. Similar in nature to Charles Larpenteur's personal narrative (1833-1872), entitled Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri (University of Nebraska Press, 1989), it makes excellent reading for those interested in primary or first person sources. For those of us enjoying the era, diaries and narratives such as this are almost pure gold.

Fort Clark spanned the period of 1830 to 1860 in today's western North Dakota. Also served as a 'way station' for both Indian tribes and artists of the era, seeing both the Mandan Indians before the smallpox of 1837 wiped them out and the personages of artists Karl Bodmer and later George Catlin. This fort was in the middle of it all, later seeing use as the Arikara village.

For the interested historical reader this book is neither boring nor hard work. A new book from The University of Oklahoma on the archaeology of this fort has recently become available: Fort Clark and Its Indian Neighbors: a Trading Post on the Upper Missouri, November, 2011, 9780806142135.

If you enjoy the Upper Missouri fur trade and forts then these two books are almost essential. Brings the era of the mountain man and the trading post/forts of his era right before us.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not for the general reader, February 23, 2011

By 

S. Clark - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839 (Paperback)

You know you're in trouble when there's a 30 page historical intro and it references 70 pages of endnotes.

This book is heavily loaded with historical minutia. You have to be at least an amateur historian to have the patience for it.

The journal entries are short, minimal and repetitive. Usually at least half of each entry is devoted to reporting the weather conditions, even though the weather rarely impacts every day life, other than to render it "disagreeable".

Chardon himself is a miserable character. He hates his life, his job, the prairies, the wildlife and the Indians. When the smallpox wipes out the Mandans, his take on it is "well, that's a band of 800 RASCALS used up." Nice, huh? Especially when it was his company's steamboat that brought the disease up, and they well knew (at last back at HQ in St. Louis) that the Indians should be vaccinated.

It's hard to understand why men like Chardon put up with the disagreeableness of it all. There's the money, of course. But a few remarks about the trader's squaw wives are pretty telling. At one point one of the traders builds a new fort and says there's "plenty of room for robes and wives". At another point, after Charbon's wife leaves him, he buys an Indian virgin of 15 for $150.

All the historical documentary evidence marshalled by the editor just goes to show that these first emissaries of civilization hit the Upper Missouri like a ton of bricks and they never eased up. So much attention is lavished on every little detail of the identity, careers and communications of these traders by the editor that you're barely even aware that any Indians or wildlife play a part in this story at all. It's amazing to me just how many letters went flying back and forth, via expresses, between the various forts and between the forts and HQ in St. Louis. The business aspect is so overwhelming, another of the observations made by a fur company man after the epidemic is that "we have lost some of our most profitable Indians." Sweet. huh?

Oh, and the description of the epidemic isn't that detailed. The references to Dickson, the liberator of all the Indians is minimal. And most of the material about Tousaint Charbonneau is just about how he went up to the Gros Ventres to get news and then he came back and there was no news, over and over.

All in all, I'm glad I read it, but if I had known how much work it was going to be before I started I wouldn't have.

Most of this is weather, weather, weather, no news, weather, weather, no news, weather, no news, killed a buffalo, weather.