Everything about Manuel Lisa totally explained
Manuel Lisa (
September 8,
1772 -
August 12,
1820) was a well known
fur trader and
explorer who founded the
Missouri Fur Company.
Born in
New Orleans of
Spanish parents (his father was a government official from
Murcia), Lisa became involved in the fur trade while in his teens. By 1796 he'd married a widow, Polly Charles Chew, and was operating a trading vessel along the
Mississippi River. In 1799 he obtained a land grant and relocated to
St. Louis, Missouri. By 1800 he was the pre-eminent trader in the fur business, and was granted a monopoly by the Spanish government in 1802 for fur commerce with the
Osage Nation. Lisa was also involved in the preparation for the journey of the
Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803-4.
Beginning in 1807, Lisa organized annual fur-gathering expeditions. On the first such excursion he established a trading post at the mouth of the
Bighorn River in present-day
Montana; the following year he augmented the site with a fort, the first such outpost in the upper
Missouri region, which he called Fort Raymond after his son; later it was referred to as Fort Manuel. While operations from the area were profitable for Lisa, there were frequent attacks by the nearby
Blackfeet tribe.
In 1809 he helped found the
St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, a joint venture with
William Clark,
Andrew Henry,
Jean Pierre Chouteau and others. Its first fur expedition that year consisted of 350 men. The company would continue business through 1814. The 1811 expedition was famous in its day because the company's barges, heading up the Missouri, overtook a rival
Astor Expedition sent by
John Jacob Astor, which had set out three weeks earlier.
Lisa was the first U.S. settler of
Nebraska, building
Fort Lisa near present-day
Omaha in 1812. This outpost remained the most important in the region for a decade.
In 1814, William Clark, by then governor of the
Missouri Territory, appointed Lisa subagent to the tribes located above the mouth of the
Kansas River. That same year Lisa married his second wife, a member of the
Omaha tribe.
Lisa spent the winter of 1819-20 at Fort Lisa with his third wife, Mary Hempstead Keeney (another former widow), after which he returned to St. Louis and died. He is buried there in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
Quote
» "I find that I've travelled a great distance while others are deciding whether to start their journey today or tomorrow."
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