File:Economic beginnings of the Far West- how we won the land beyond the Mississippi (1912) (14592100049).jpg

Identifier: economicbeginnin00coma (find matches)
Title: Economic beginnings of the Far West: how we won the land beyond the Mississippi
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Coman, Katharine 1857-1915
Subjects: Mormons and Mormonism -- General works United States, West -- History Utah Economic conditions
Publisher: New York: Macmillan
Contributing Library: Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Digitizing Sponsor: Corporation of the Presiding Bishop, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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d by the upstart com-panies that endeavored to invade the territory longmonopolized by the big house. Fox, Livingstone& Co., of New York, set up a post, Fort Mortimer,on the Yellowstone in 1846, and for four yearsmaintained a precarious existence through enticingthe American Fur Companys trappers to desert bypromises of higher wages, and secured first inningsin the Indian trade by lavish dispensing of liquor.No sooner had this firm sold out than a new op-position arose, Harvey, Pruneau & Co., formerclerks of the Great Company, and the business de-generated from bad to worse. At forty years of age, Larpenteur, grown pig-headed and captious, quarrelled with his superiorsand determined to quit the fur trade and take hisAssiniboin wife and half-breed children to the Flat-head mission of which Father de Smet had told him.In company with another trade-weary Frenchman(1847), he set out up the Missouri, meaning to crossthe mountains by the Lewis and Clark Pass. The Fort Bridger, 1849.
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Fort Laramie, 1853. THE FUR TRADE 373 little caravan of two wagons, two carts, and eightpack horses succeeded in reaching Sun River withno serious mishap, but there a brush with the Black-feet and the approach of winter turned them back.The two families made a second attempt the followingyear, mounted this time on horseback, and got as faras Great Falls; but they were a second time forcedback by hardships too severe for even Indian womento endure, and Larpenteur returned to the service ofthe American Fur Company. Two years experienceconvinced him that there was nothing more to bemade in the Indian trade, 60 and he bought a claimon the Little Sioux River, meaning to open a smallfarm. The place lay in the path of the Mormonmigration, and realizing that settlers were comingin fast, the old trader thought he saw a chance tomake money more rapidly than by growing corn.He built a store and a blacksmith shop for the use ofemigrants and ran a ferry across the river, borrowingheavily to financ

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