Trade Beads
Essential supplies
Lewis’s preliminary list of supplies and equipment needed for the expedition, drawn up in the spring of 1803, included blue beads. “This is a coarse cheap bead,” he wrote, “imported from China….”
The Fur Trade
Lisa’s Fur Trade Forts
And the deaths of Potts and Drouillard
by W. Raymond Wood
Manuel Lisa’s men at Fort Raymond not only encouraged the Crows to come trade with them, but they set out parties to trap beaver on their own. It was the latter effort that led to hostilities with the Blackfeet that affected Potts, Drouillard, and Colter.
Fur Trade after the Expedition
by W. Raymond Wood
The Louisiana Purchase and the lure of its beaver population led to a veritable flood of traders and trappers moving toward the Upper Missouri and the Northern Rocky Mountains and the slow abandonment of the overland trade in the United States by Canadian and British interests.
Missouri River Fur Trade
by Joseph A. Mussulman, W. Raymond Wood
The Corps of Discovery had been, as James Ronda phrased it, “only the latest in a long series of traders and travelers” to visit the tribes living along the Missouri. The Mandans had been visited in 1738 by la Vérendrye from his base on the Assiniboine River.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with additional funding from the following:
