Lisa was also determined to over-take Astor's group who bent their backs in an effort to stop Lisa's party from catching them. The outcome of this Lisa-Astor race up the Missouri River was never equaled again. Lisa's party caught the Astor's and in only sixty-one days made the 1200 miles up-stream. They had run-ins with the Arikara and the Mandans, as well as the Assiniboins in November of 1806, before they ascended the Yellowstone to the entrance of the Bighorn River to the land of the friendly Crow.
His plan to use white men as trappers was far more profitable than Lisa had dreamed. In August of 1808 he was back in Saint Louis with a fortune in pelts. Where he had previously made enemies and was denied any monetary backing, he was now received as a conquering hero. His old enemies and rivals clamored to finance his next trip. Even Pierre and Auguste Chouteau lent their support as did Benjamin Wilkinson, the brother of the Governor who had vetoed Lisa's Santa Fe venture.
The following spring a fleet of thirteen keelboats and barges, with about three hundred men of Lisa's Missouri Fur Company, headed up-stream towards the mountains where a wealth of beaver could be transformed into gold.
To read more, on the Internet, about Manuel Lisa, go to: Luttings' 1812 Journal:
http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/htm... Journal of a Fur Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri 1812-1813 by John C. Lutting who was a clerk for Lisa's Missouri Fur Trading Company.
To explore the various water-craft used by the fur trade of this time-period see: Missouri River Heritage Corridor - The Way West:
http://www.mid-mo.net/bigmuddy/motrekker...
Don't Forget to Visit Our SUITE 101 UNIVERSITY: your place for online learning! A new course has been added and is now in progress: THE GREAT AMERICAN WEST, 1861 to 1876, written and instructed by Mary Trotter Kion. http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17161...
Major sources for this article are: Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade by Richard Oglesby.
North American Indians in Historical Perspective edited by Eleanor Burke Leacock and Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Random House, New York, 1971.
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