George Catlin, 1832. Smithsonian Institution.

Many of the agents, clerks and other personnel of the trading posts, married Indian women. These "Indian marriages," as they were called, were normally of a temporary character and when the white trader moved to another station or returned to the States, often to his white wife and children, he abandoned his Indian wife and his half-breed offspring. Men in charge of the fur trading posts endeavored to marry into prominent and influential Indian families because by such connections their adherents were increased and they made greater profits. The Indian relatives remained loyal and traded nowhere else. According to tradition, when Manuel Lisa in 1819 brought his white wife from St. Louis to live with him at Fort Lisa, he sent a messenger ahead with instructions that his Indian wife, the daughter of an Omaha chief, should be sent to the village of her people. James Kipp, bourgeois at Fort Clark, had a Mandan wife at that post and a white wife and children at Liberty, Missouri. Denig, at Fort Union, had two Indian wives, a young one and an old one. For a clerk, however, a woman of rank was too expensive and brought him no advantage since he worked at a fixed salary. [57]

Not all of the traders, however, abandoned their Indian wives when they returned to civilization. When Denig retired from the fur trade in 1856, he took his Assiniboin wife and his mixed-blood family with him to the Red River Settlement in Canada and placed his children in school. The children married and spent their lives in Canada. [58] In 1858 Alexander Culbertson, who had amassed a fortune of some $300,000 as an American Fur Company trader, brought his wife, Natawista, the daughter of a Blackfoot chief, and their family to Peoria, Illinois. There they built a nine-room mansion and had a stable with fine carriage horses which were staffed with servants and stablemen. He married his Indian wife according to white men's rites and sent his children to white schools. As a result of bad speculation and reckless spending, the Culbertson fortune was soon dissipated and the family was forced to return to the Indian country. Many of their descendants are now living on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. [59]

Kurz observed that marriages between the white men and Indian women depended in a large measure on the girl's parents. If the girl came from a good family, she was loyal to her husband. Since the engagees normally married riffraff, their children inherited and acquired the bad characteristics of their parents. The half-breed children of the clerks and traders, however, were "a credit to the white race." [60] At the various Indian agencies on the Upper Missouri, many of the more prominent mixed-blood families still bear the name of their white fur trader ancestors.

Francis Chardon, bourgeois at Fort Clark in the 1830's, had several Indian wives of whom he wrote in his journal. Although Pierre Chouteau Jr. regarded Chardon's "conduct too notorious to inspire confidence," [61] the latter's journal indicates that life with Indian women was not always one of bliss. His Sioux wife gave him a beating for being unfaithful to her. [62] When she died several months later (April 1837) he briefly recorded, "My childrens Mother died this day at 11 OClock—Sent her down in a canoe, to be entered [sic] at Fort Pierre, in the Land of her Parents." [63] He apparently took a Ree wife a month later from whom he separated in the following May. [64 ] About six weeks later Chardon wrote in his diary, "having lived for two Months a single life, and could not stand it any longer, I concluded to day, to buy myself a Wife, a young Virgin of 15—which cost $150." [65] However, this young Ree wife deserted him in less than two months. [66] He proceeded to discipline his next wife, whom he stole from Jacob Halsey on a trip to Fort Pierre in the summer of 1838, in true Indian style. "Gave a good whipping to my young Wife, the first since our union," [67] he wrote. This last young Indian girl apparently was not too attentive to her duties as a house wife as he wrote several months later, "Gave a whipping to my beloved wife, for not mending my Moccassins." [68]

The white hunters employed at Fort Clark had equally bad luck with their Indian wives. Chardon wrote that N. Durant could not leave his "squaw—for fear of someone running away with her." [69] When Durant was accidentally killed by a war party a short time afterwards, Chardon caustically remarked "his [Durant's] wife left the Fort this Morning, to take up her quarters in the Village. She appears to not care much about it. What affectionate Wives We all have in this Country!" [70] John Newman, another hunter, also had trouble with his Indian wives. "Newman and his wife, after six days quarreling and Pouting with each other had a seperation," Chardon wrote, "he started down to the Ree Camp in quest of an other. O may success attend him, in the Wife line, it is his third since his fall hunt—." [71]

The cynical Kurz, whose Indian consort left him, observed that to keep the respect of an Indian wife, the husband must administer "sound lashings . . . from time to time to keep alive her respect and affection." [72]

Other whites found it disadvantageous and very expensive to be married to an Indian woman because they were required to keep the larder of the in-laws well supplied with coffee, meal, sugar, and molasses. [73]

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