The American West was seen as one great resource by the Europeans who helped themselves to it, starting in the 18th Century. At first, these had come as groups of explorers and fur trappers, and later as emigrants and gold prospectors, preceded and followed by the boys in blue constructing their forts. As far as The Black Hills was concerned, fur trappers were the first non-indigenous people to come in to contact with the tribes living there. As the “pathfinders” of the hoards to come, their impact on the destiny of the original inhabitants was therefore profound.
The Museum of the Fur Trade, located 3 miles east of Chadron, opened its doors in 1955. “This was the first museum within a hundred-mile radius and the area people were very proud of it.” A privately funded museum, it covers over 500 years of history and the entire North American continent.
In 1953, Charles Hanson had the idea of a museum about the fur trade. There have always been misconceptions surrounding the fur trade, fostered in part by literature, movies, and television. Charles wanted to help dispel these as well as “provide a tangible reality to the images fostered by generations of academics who had concentrated on the biographies and geography of the fur trade.”
Charles’ vision for the museum included “the story of the fur trade across North America from the time of the first European contact to present day and should be located at the site of an actual trading post.” He examined sites in five states before deciding on the Museum’s current location. Indeed, in the Lakota language, Chadron is known as čhápa wakpá otȟúŋwahe, meaning “beaver river city”.
All this local history made it the perfect spot to establish the Museum of the Fur Trade.
The “actual trading post” Charles was referring to is that of James Bordeaux who, at the time of construction in 1837, was an agent of the American Fur Company before going into business for himself. The trading post sits next to Bordeaux Creek. While not the original building, the log cabin was reconstructed in 1955 on its original foundation stones.
The southwest design of the museum was to be “a tribute to the Hispanic people who were among the first traders in the area.” It houses over 8,000 items pertaining to the material culture of the Fur Trade. The collection “represents every type of object exchanged by Europeans and Americans with the native people of North America.” More specifically it contains over 300 firearms or firearm fragments comprising of arms captured at Wounded Knee, personal weapons such as those belonging to Kit Carson and Tecumseh and the largest and most complete collection of Northwest guns in the world. The largest portion of trade occurred in textiles of which we have many examples of point blankets, southwest blankets, and fabrics. Items of note in our textile collection is the oldest point blanket made in 1775, and 5 cotton fabric samples chosen by William Clark specifically for trade with the western Indian tribes.
Other buildings include the Trade Room where the fur traders who transported various goods to trade for furs with the local trappers worked out their deals. For example, a flintlock gun was exchanged for 5 buffalo robes, a Medium blanket for 3 buffalo robes, 5 yards of print cotton material, 1 buffalo robe, and 50 bullets and 1 lb powder for 1 buffalo robe.
The museum has the world’s most comprehensive collection of textiles traded during this era (Bevin B. and Maxine Bump Exhibit Hall), bricks of compressed tea from Russia, twists of tobacco sold by the fathom, and Chinese vermillion body paint!
There’s also a robe press used to bale the buffalo robes. Each winter, the Bordeaux Post took in about a thousand tanned buffalo robes. When folded (hair to the inside), the robes measured 2 feet by 3 feet in size. Eastern buyers bought the robes for bed covers, and lab robes for traveling and coats.
The museum has the largest, and most complete, collection of guns made specifically for trade with the early Indigenous inhabitants of the continent.
Many are simply named as Northwest guns, along with the years they were built. Others include Hawken rifles, buffalo guns, even Remingtons. In fact, the collection includes the earliest known intact trade gun, which was made in the Netherlands before 1650!
The first part of the museum, the Lindeken Exhibit Hall, celebrates the three centuries when the canoe men or the voyageurs followed North America’s rivers and streams into the interior. Later, into the end of the 1800s, red river carts were used for overland transportation of the furs. These were often built by the Metis (descendants of the voyageurs and their local wives), with iron bands for the wheels added by wheelwrights hired by the fur companies. One of these carts could carry up to 800 or 900 pounds of trade goods, or furs, on the return trip. The museum has a beautiful replica of this transportation innovation on display.
Through the years staff have conducted research worldwide. This has enabled the museum to provide thousands of photographs to individuals, institutions and publications including Reader’s Digest, National Geographic and the Smithsonian. It also assists with the continued growth of our collection and publications.
The museum publishes a Quarterly journal containing articles of various aspects of the fur trade. Other publications include 20+ titles consisting of, the Hawken Rifle, Buckskinners Cookbook, When Skins Were Money: A history of the Fur Trade and numerous sketchbooks. The museum’s most recent undertaking has been the Encyclopedia of Trade Goods. This 6-volume set contains information about the material culture of the fur trade.
Today’s visitors are welcomed warmly, offered an introductory video and given a map of the museum depicting the location and a synopsis of the galleries. It also guides visitors through the outside exhibit where they not only see a furnished reconstructed Bordeaux Post, warehouse and heirloom garden but can see inside an 18-foot tipi and a scenic view pretty similar to what visitors to the post would have seen almost 200 years ago.