Fontenelle's Post - History

History

In 1822 Joshua Pilcher of the Missouri Fur Company built a fur trading post on the west bank of the Missouri River to trade with the local Native American tribes of Omaha, Otoe, Missouri and Pawnee. Fur trading in the United States was not regulated by governments, and fur traders competed madly for the lucrative business, enticing the American Indians with various trade goods and often liquor. At first Pilcher competed with John Jacob Astor's Cabanné's Post of the American Fur Company (AFC) north of Bellevue. In 1823 Astor bought Pilcher's, bringing it into his monopoly of the fur trade under the American Fur Company.

In 1828 the trader Lucien Fontenelle, born into a wealthy French Creole family in New Orleans, purchased Pilcher's Trading Post. Having started trading at age 19, Fontenelle was then 28 and a representative of the American Fur Company. The site became known as Fontenelle's Post.

Like many traders, Fontenelle had married a high-status Native American woman, and formed important alliances with her people. She was Me-um-bane (Bright Star), a daughter of the Omaha principal chief Big Elk. They had five children together: Logan (b. 1825), Albert (b. 1827), Tecumseh (b. 1829) (named for the great Shawnee chief), Henry (b. 1831) and Susan (b. 1833). Fontenelle sent their sons to St. Louis to ensure they had European-American style schooling. Although the mother's people would protect her children, the Omaha had a patrilineal system in which children belonged to their father's gens. Children of a "white" father had no place in the tribe; generally unless such mixed-race boys were adopted by a man of the tribe, they could not have status in it.

With the fur trade declining because of changes in taste in Europe and the decline of game in the US, in 1832 Fontenelle sold the post to the US government. It was used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the headquarters of the Missouri River Indian Agency, also called the Bellevue Agency. The Bureau of Indian Affairs allowed missionaries to come to the Indian reservations. In 1833, the US Indian agent allowed Moses and Eliza Merrill, Baptist missionaries, to live at the Post as a temporary home. In 1835 the Merrills founded the first Christian mission in Nebraska Territory.

Fontenelle was appointed US Indian agent at Fort Laramie and his family joined him there in 1837. He died in 1840 at the age of 40.

From 1840 to l853, Logan Fontenelle, the oldest son of Lucien and Me-um-bane, worked as an official interpreter at the US Indian agency at Fontenelle's Post. He gained much respect among both the Omaha and European-American communities. He served as an interpreter during the important negotiations of 1853-1854 that resulted in the Omaha ceding most of their territory to the United States, in exchange for annuities and goods, and settling on a reservation in northeastern Nebraska. The town of Bellevue, Nebraska was established in 1855 after developing around the post and Indian agency.