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20 CHAPTER 2 Emerging Sons The events of 1803 left a profound impact on the direction of this story. Though of French roots, the brothers had been born subjects of the king of Spain. In 1803, they became Americans, as the result of one of the greatest real estate deals in all history, the Louisiana Purchase, which made St. Louis, in deed, the gateway to the American West. Personally, 1803 began to mark the decline of Joseph II, due to ill health, the onset of gradual blindness, and financial burdens, which in May 1803 on the account sheet of the Chouteaus alone amounted to over 6,300 piastres. The year marked the emergence of his son Joseph III as the principal family business leader, a position he would dominate for the next generation. In 1803, Joseph III turned twenty, having grown in both experience and responsibility for the family operations in St. Louis. There exists no firm record of how far he had been up the Missouri River, or if any of his younger brothers had gone with him, but considering the father’s known association with men like Sanguinet and others who held licenses to trade as far up as the Platte, it would not be beyond reason to assume that at least Joseph III had traveled that far, if only at his father’s behest to keep an eye on the family investments.1 Late in his life, Joseph Robidoux III was called to a St. Louis deposition in 1856 regarding the property claims against the estate of Joseph Brazeau, a family he had once had close ties with during his youth. The deposition is important because in it he clarifies two dates or events that have been in some contention regarding his emerging years. He identified himself for the attorney and began by briefly outlining his early life there. “I was born in this town of St. Louis. I lived here from 1784 where I was born, all the time until now, except when I have traveled and was absent. I lived here all the time when I was a boy and a young man. I began to travel in 1803. I traveled to trade with the Indians west and north of the Missouri.” Assuming the recollection accurate, the inference is that he first ascended the Missouri River in 1803 and not before .“I would be gone about 10 months in my trading expeditions. I would go away in August and return in June. I have resided in St. Joseph since 1843. I was Emerging Sons 21 acquainted with the Spanish inhabitants of St. Louis and neighborhood during the Spanish times. I knew a man by the name of Joseph Brazeau. I knew two of that name, one an old man and the other a young man. These talks I had with Brazeau, took place while I lived with him—my business has been that of a merchant and trader.”2 When he first ascended the Missouri, in1803 as he recalled, we know that at one spot on the muddy banks of that swirling river he established an association that stuck, for better or worse. Young, handsome, and swarthy of complexion, with dark brown, nearly black hair, he already had the experience and the physical and mental frame of a frontiersman. Area Indian tribes, the Missouri, Oto(e), and Iowa(y), with their valuable furs, congregated at the site to trade. A creek flowed into the Missouri from the east bank, sixty miles as the crow flies above the Kansas River, that Robidoux and his French-speaking compatriots called Le Serpent Noir, which means “the blacksnake.” Because of the sharply rising river bluffs, the area became known as the Blacksnake Hills. Why it was called blacksnake is attributed to a number of sources. A band of the Missouri tribe called the Blacksnake Indians lived in the area. The dark, shaded, winding creek that flowed through the area reminded them of the black serpents. Or it may have been the fact that there were black snakes, indigenous to the area, crawling all over the place when they arrived. No one really knows if one or all of the reasons are correct. The name Blacksnake Hills took, and young Joseph Robidoux III began a lifelong, but by no means exclusive, connection with the site.3 During those first travels up the Missouri, Joseph began to establish personal relations with the area tribes through the taking of Indian women as...

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