During the 1860s, the Missouri River served as a natural highway, through snags and rapids, from St. Louis to Fort Benton for steamboats bringing Yankees and Rebels and their families to the remote Montana territory. The migration transformed the Upper Missouri region from the isolation of the fur trade era to the raucous gold rush days that would keep the region in turmoil for decades. The influx of newcomers involved its share of dramatic episodes, including the explosion of the Chippewa triggered by a drunken crew member, the mystery of the fugitive James-Younger gang and Colonel Everton Conger's journey from capturing John Wilkes Booth to the Montana Supreme Court. Acclaimed historian Ken Robison reveals the thrilling history behind this war-weary wave of migration seeking opportunity on Montana's wild and scenic frontier.

During the 1860s, the Missouri River served as a natural highway, through snags and rapids, from St. Louis to Fort Benton for steamboats bringing Yankees and Rebels and their families to the remote Montana territory. The migration transformed the Upper Missouri region from the isolation of the fur trade era to the raucous gold rush days that would keep the region in turmoil for decades. The influx of newcomers involved its share of dramatic episodes, including the explosion of the Chippewa triggered by a drunken crew member, the mystery of the fugitive James-Younger gang and Colonel Everton Conger's journey from capturing John Wilkes Booth to the Montana Supreme Court. Acclaimed historian Ken Robison reveals the thrilling history behind this war-weary wave of migration seeking opportunity on Montana's wild and scenic frontier.

In this book, Barton Barbour presents the first comprehensive history of Fort Union, the nineteenth century's most important and longest-lived Upper Missouri River fur trading post. Barbour explores the economic, social, legal, cultural, and political significance of the fort which was the brainchild of Kenneth McKenzie and Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and a part of John Jacob Astor's fur trade empire. From 1830 to 1867, Fort Union symbolized the power of New York and St. Louis, and later, St. Paul merchants' capital in the West. The most lucrative post on the northern plains, Fort Union affected national relations with a number of native tribes, such as the Assiniboine, Cree, Crow, Sioux, and Blackfeet. It also influenced American interactions with Great Britain, whose powerful Hudson's Bay Company competed for Upper Missouri furs. Barbour shows how Indians, mixed-bloods, Hispanic-, African-, Anglo-, and other Euro-Americans living at Fort Union created a system of community law that helped maintain their unique frontier society. Many visiting artists and scientists produced a magnificent graphic and verbal record of events and people at the post, but the old-time world of fur traders and Indians collapsed during the Civil War when political winds shifted in favor of Lincoln's Republican Party. In 1865 Chouteau lost his trade license and sold Fort Union to new operators, who had little interest in maintaining the post's former culture. Barton H. Barbour is Professor of History at Boise State University and author of Jedidiah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Their story provides a telescopic view of issues that would sweep the nation for the remainder of the nineteenth century: the promise and anxiety inherent in post-Civil War nation building, the complexities involved in westward expansion, and the changing nature of mid-nineteenth century manhood. Butts seamlessly maintains a human face on events of national import, punctuating her thoroughly researched narrative with excerpts from Dimon's letters home.

Withdrawal of the mighty Hudson Bay Company from present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan created a lawless environment with new economic opportunities. A cross-border trading bond arose with growing steamboat mercantile center Fort Benton in Montana Territory. In 1870, Montana traders Johnny Healy and Al Hamilton moved across the Medicine Line and built Fort Whoop-Up. It established the two-hundred-mile Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton, through Blackfoot lands, to the Belly River near today's Lethbridge. Over the next decade, the buffalo robe trade flourished with the Blackfoot, as did violence. The turmoil forced the creation of Canada's North West Mounted Police, tasked with closing down the whiskey trade and evicting the Montana traders. Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life this dramatic story.

Withdrawal of the mighty Hudson Bay Company from present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan created a lawless environment with new economic opportunities. A cross-border trading bond arose with growing steamboat mercantile center Fort Benton in Montana Territory. In 1870, Montana traders Johnny Healy and Al Hamilton moved across the Medicine Line and built Fort Whoop-Up. It established the two-hundred-mile Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton, through Blackfoot lands, to the Belly River near today's Lethbridge. Over the next decade, the buffalo robe trade flourished with the Blackfoot, as did violence. The turmoil forced the creation of Canada's North West Mounted Police, tasked with closing down the whiskey trade and evicting the Montana traders. Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life this dramatic story.