Trudeau Cabin Site

TRUDEAU CABIN SITE 105 Miles “The Company of Commerce to discover the Nations of the Upper Missouri, in 1794 sent the St. Louis village school master, on Jean Baptiste Trudeau up the river with some trade goods and eight voyageurs to capture the fur trade of the Sioux, Aricara, and Mandans. Trudeau did his best, which was not too good, and in the fall of 1794 knew he was going to have to winter on the Missouri.

He sought a hide out, between the Sioux to the N and the Poncas to the S, where he and his group could hide their trade goods and pass the winter in reasonable comfort. He selected a point where there was concealment, much wood, a fine spring. Lewis & Clark found this point ten years later in 1804, but Big Rabbitt, an Omaha chief found them in it that winter and made life anything but dull for the sojourners.

This was the first white man’s structure on the Upper Missouri and so a most important point. As of 1955 the exact location has not been pin pointed but it was near the big spring ¼ mile back from the Missouri. In the chalk rock bank of the river, just above the Trudeau site valley, is the remains of the ‘dugway’ cut out in the winter of 1863-64 by the garrison at Ft. Randall to afford a short cut to Yankton Agency.