Russel Farnham - Fur Trader

Fur Trader

In November 1811, he was one of several men who pursued and captured a group of deserters. He also took part in fighting Indians at The Dalles, building a trading post near Spokane and lived among the Flatheads during the winter of 1812-13. According to Washington Irving, Farnham was ordered by Clark to execute a local Indian who had been caught stealing a silver cup from one of the hunting and trapping camps. He hung the Indian from a sapling on June 1, 1813; this incident caused a great deal of hostility between Farnham's party and the local tribes.

In the spring of 1814, he was entrusted with ₤40,000 in sterling bills as well as papers relating the sale of the Astoria trading post to the British North-West Company and ordered by Wilson P. Hunt, commander of the second expedition, to deliver them to John Jacob Astor via St. Petersburg. Farnham traveled on foot crossing the ice sheet across the Bering Straits and into Kamchatka. He suffered from exposure against the severe and inhospitable Siberian climate and, although leaving Astoria with a small backpack of provisions, suffered from malnutrition having been forced to cut and eat the tops of his own boots to survive. However, he was able to make his way to St. Petersburg and, from Paris eventually arrived in New York. He was the first American to make the journey, John Ledyard having twice failed to do so. Another account claims Farnham left with Hunt on the Pedler and was dropped off on the coast of Kamchatka on April 3, 1814 and, after arriving in St. Petersburg, instead left from Hamburg, Germany, whereupon he arrived to meet Astor in New York.

Employed by Astor to oversee the business interests of American Fur Company in the Great Lakes region, he was arrested by the British as a spy during the War of 1812. Transported for trial to Prairie du Chien, several of his friends appealed to British authorities of his innocence and the charges were eventually dropped. He made one of the first trips into the Midwest United States on behalf of the American Fur Company in 1817, and later formed a partnership with George Davenport trading with the Sauk and Fox in the Missouri Valley. During this time he took a wife from the Menominee tribe named Agathe Wood and had a daughter.