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Lisa became
involved in the fur trade during his teens, and by 1796 he was operating a
fur trading vessel along the Mississippi River.
By this time he was also married to a widow, Polly Charles Chew.
Being a Spanish citizen, he obtained a land grant from the Spanish
government in 1799, and relocated to St. Louis.
By 1800 he was a leading businessman in the fur trade, and in 1802
was granted a monopoly for fur trade with the Osage Indians.
In 1803 when the
Louisiana Territory was purchased by the United States, Manuel Lisa
automatically became a U.S. citizen because of his residency in St. Louis.
As a knowledgeable businessman in St. Louis, Lisa was involved in
outfitting the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803-1804.
In addition to supplies, it is reported that the expedition
obtained a keelboat and crew through Lisa.
Lisa's relationship with Lewis and Clark was not always cordial, and they
may have had a falling
out with Lisa before they left upriver. In 1806 when
Lewis and Clark returned from their journey across the continent, they
confirmed the rumors of country teeming with beaver near the headwaters of
the Missouri River. Manuel
Lisa quickly formed a company to take advantage of this potential source
of wealth. In 1807 he left St
Louis with two keelboats and a brigade of more than 50 men, ascending the
Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers to the mouth of the Bighorn where he
established a trading post. Part
of his brigade engaged in trade with the neighboring Indian tribes, while
the remainder of his men were employed hunting and trapping fur-bearing
animals. The following
year he constructed a fort at the mouth of the Bighorn River, the first
such outpost in the upper Missouri region.
Lisa named the structure Fort Raymond, after his son, but it was
commonly referred to as Fort Manuel. Trapping and
trading operations of this early venture were modestly profitable.
The company traded weapons, blankets, jewelry, tobacco, and liquor
for any type of fur bearing pelts the Indians could provide.
However, his operations were hampered by frequent attacks by
Blackfoot Indians with heavy loss of life and equipment. In 1809 he along
with William Clark (of Lewis and Clark), Andrew Henry (a later partner to Ashley),
Jean Pierre Chouteau and others would found a new company, the St. Louis
Missouri Fur Company, to exploit the upper Missouri River region.
The Blackfoot Indians were extremely hostile to all American trappers, and
the company sustained heavy loss in life and equipment (For a description
of one such encounter). Eventually the company would limit its
operations to the Lower Missouri River to avoid the Blackfoot
Indians. Over the next ten years the company underwent a series of
reorganizations. Throughout
these changes, Manuel Lisa remained a unifying figure in management and an expedition leader. The 1811
expedition of this company was famous in its time, when the company
keelboats, leaving St Louis three weeks after a brigade sent out by John
Jacob Astor, overtook the rival party before arriving at the Mandan
Villages. In 1812, Lisa
constructed a trading post, called Fort Lisa, just north of present day
Omaha, Nebraska, and in subsequent years he would spend most of his
winters here. In 1814, William
Clark, who was by then the governor of the Missouri Territory, appointed
Lisa as subagent to the Indian tribes located above the mouth of the
Kansas River. It was at this
time that Lisa took an additional wife, a woman of the Omaha Indian tribe.
Multiple marriages into different Indian tribes were not uncommon
for early fur traders. The
marriage ensured friendly relations, and facilitated business.
Lisa’s first wife, Polly, died in 1817, and his second wife, Mary
Hempstead Keeney, wintered with Lisa in 1819 and 1820 at Fort Lisa,
becoming the first white woman in Nebraska.
After the winter of 1820, Lisa, who was ailing, returned to St.
Louis, where he died August 12, 1826.
Although the fur
trade was never to produce great wealth for Lisa, he was non-the-less a
successful figure in the fur trade. Many
of the practices and methods developed by him were to become standard
practice in the trade in subsequent years.
During his years in the fur trade Lisa gained a reputation as a
great man and leader. He
shared equally with his men in the hardships on the river; from cordelling
the keelboats up the river, to forgoing food during lean times.
During a 12-year period he traveled 25,000 miles along the Missouri
River. Lisa saw himself as a
benefactor to the Indians and not as an exploiter.
In 1817, he wrote to a friend that he had distributed garden seeds
to the Indians including seeds of pumpkins, beans, turnips and potatoes.
He also indicated that he loaned them traps and arranged for
“blacksmithing” to be done for them.
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Louisiana
Purchase, were at this time part of New Spain.