Fort Manuel

August 8, 1812 to March 5, 1813 The war of 1812 was not started when Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard, who had become an American Citizen, started from St. Louis on May 8, with men and supplies to start a fur trade post, located to trade with Aricara, Mandans and Yanktonaise on the Upper Missouri. Among his passengers were Touissant Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife, Sacacawea.

ON the 9th of August they had arrived ‘at a beautiful prairie bluff with several bottoms of fine timber around’. They started trade and a fort. By November 19th they had ‘hung the great door at the entrance to the fort…saluted by seven guns and those rounds of musquestry, made the tour around the fort and baptized the same MANUEL”.

On Sunday, December 20th Luttig, the factor made this entry in his journal: ‘This evening the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw, died of a putrid fever. She was a good and the best woman in the fort, aged about 25 years she left a fine infant girl’. This was the famed Sacacawea of Lewis & Clark’s journey to the Pacific.

The Fort was not destined for a long life. Most of the Indians were allied to the British and on March 5, 1813, attacked and burnt the Fort. Lisa dropped down river with what he could salvage and re-established at the Old Loisel, 1802-1809 post, at the Big Bend.