During the summer and fall of 1807, Manuel Lisa, a swarthy Spaniard, known around St. Louis, Missouri and other extended parts of the young country, set out for the west to make his fortune. Lisa and his party of trappers were headed into the wild, and nearly unknown, regions of the west. It was a vast area America had recently acquired after some fortunate negotiations with France's Napoleon Bonaparte. This land acquisition, known at the Louisiana Purchase, stretched all the way from New Orleans in Louisiana and westward across the Great Plains. At that time, it was anyone's guess just how much land the Purchase actually included.
Just prior to Lisa starting on his big westward trek only a couple of stouthearted fellows and their party of men had traveled the area, going all the way to the Pacific Ocean. These two men were, of course, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark who, by order of President Jefferson, had between 1804 and 1806 did their stint for American exploration. But now Lewis and Clark had returned to St. Louis and it was time for someone else to make the venture into the great unknown. And that fellow was Manuel Lisa.
Lisa, who had come to St. Louis from New Orleans in 1798, was not overly admired amongst his fellow townsmen. For one thing Lisa was Spanish while the founding fathers of St. Louis, the Chouteaus, were French. Lisa was bound and determined to make his mark and money in the lucrative fur trade, a business the Chouteaus up until now had pretty much ruled in the area.
Lisa wasn't above doing a little underhandedness to get ahead. Of course neither were the Chouteaus and company, but there again Lisa was infringing on the Chouteaus privileges. For instance, Lisa obtained the rights to trade with the Osage Indians. Well, that was Lisa's privilege if he could get it. The only hitch in the situation was that trading with the Osage had been an advantage the Chouteaus had already held for nearly a decade. The Chouteaus fixed Lisa's wagon by relocating the Osage Indians to another area outside of the trade boundaries that Lisa had acquired rights to. Moving the Osage was an easy project for the Chouteaus considering the Chouteaus were using whiskey as a major trade item to the Indians, a commodity that by now most of these Osage were addicted to.
But that was alright. Lisa was also getting rich by dealing in real estate and by buying and selling slaves. He tried to interest James Wilkinson, the new governor of Louisiana Territory, which at that time included Missouri, in starting a trade with New Mexico. The governor, however, vetoed the idea. But of course Wilkinson was making his own plans in that direction, plans that later landed Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in a Spanish jail. But that's another story you can adventure into at:
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