Manuel Lisa, also known as Manuel de Lisa (September 8, 1772, in New Orleans Louisiana (New Spain) – August 12, 1820, in St. Louis, Missouri), was a Spanish citizen and later American citizen who, while living on the western frontier, became a landowner, merchant, fur trader, United States Indian agent, and explorer. Lisa was among the founders, in St. Louis, of the Missouri Fur Company, an early fur trading company. Manuel Lisa gained respect through his trading among Native American tribes of the upper Missouri River region, such as the Teton Sioux, Omaha and Ponca.
After being appointed, as US Indian agent, during the War of 1812, Lisa used his standing among the tribes to encourage their alliance with the United States and their warfare against tribes allied with the United Kingdom.Primm, 125. While still married to a European-American woman in St. Louis, where he kept a residence, in 1814 Lisa married Mitane, a daughter of Big Elk, the principal chief of the Omaha people, as part of securing their alliance. They had two children together, whom Lisa provided for equally in his will with his children by his other marriage.
Early life Little is known of the early life of Manuel Lisa, but he is believed to have been born in 1772 in New Orleans, then part of Spanish Louisiana. It was ceded to Spain by France after the British victory in the Seven Years' War, when the British gained Florida in exchange with Spain for French lands west of the Mississippi River.Goodwin, 152.Certain sources suggest Lisa was born in the West Indies, possibly Cuba. Chittenden, 125. His father, Christoval de Lisa, was born in Murcia, Spain, while his mother, Maria Ignacia Rodriguez, was born to a colonial family in St. Augustine, Florida. It is likely that Christoval came to Spanish Louisiana in the service of the governor Alejandro O'Reilly, who started his tenure in 1769. Manuel had at least one elder brother, Joaquin Lisa, who worked with him in his early trade expeditions.
By 1789, Manuel Lisa and his brother Joaquin were trading on the Mississippi River in New Madrid, Missouri; the next recorded mention of Manuel Lisa was again in New Madrid, after he had returned from trading along the Wabash River.
Marriage and family By 1796 Lisa had married Polly Charles Chew (d. 1817), a young widow from New Orleans. After he obtained a land grant in the Missouri area, they relocated to St. Louis, which was the center of the region's thriving fur trade, established primarily by French colonists, some also from New Orleans. Polly Lisa lived in the city with their three children while her husband made his long expeditions to various Indian territories on the Upper Missouri River.
After founding Fort Lisa about 1813, a post in what is now part of Omaha, Nebraska, Lisa worked to gain alliances with local tribes, such as the Omaha. After being appointed US Indian agent in the area by the governor of the Missouri Territory, in 1814 Lisa married Mitane, a daughter of Big Elk, the principal chief of the Omaha until 1846. Both sides saw it as a strategic alliance. Lisa and Mitane had two children together, Rosalie and Christopher, born in subsequent years after Lisa's expeditions and wintering over at Fort Lisa.
"Kinship and ties of affinity proved more than merely useful to the traders. They were both a source of power and a necessity if one was to achieve success in the trade."Bieder, p. 3 Only traders were accepted for marriages to high-status women, such as the daughters of chiefs, as the chiefs saw such marriages as a way to increase their own power. As the Omaha had a patrilineal system, the children of Lisa and Mitane were considered "white" as their father was "white". The tribe protected them, but unless such mixed-race children were officially adopted by a man of the tribe, they were not considered Omaha and had no real place in a gens (clan), the basic kinship unit.Melvin Randolph Gilmore, "The True Logan Fontenelle", Publications of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. 19, edited by Albert Watkins, Nebraska State Historical Society, 1919, pp. 64-65, at GenNet, accessed 25 August 2011
Polly Chew Lisa died in 1817 in St. Louis while Manuel Lisa was away on an expedition. After his return the following year, on August 5, 1818, Lisa married the widow Mary Hempstead Keeny, a sister of his friend, the attorney Edward Hempstead. As a widow, she had migrated with her parents and siblings from Connecticut to join four brothers already in Missouri.Smith, 19-24.Note: Although Lisa was a Catholic, he was "evidently not a very punctilious follower," as he not only married a Presbyterian, but also agreed to a marriage conducted by Salmon Giddings, founder of the Presbyterian church in St. Louis. Chittenden, 134. He had also overlooked his marriage with Mitane.)
In 1819 Lisa took his new wife Mary with him for his next expedition and winter at Fort Lisa, Nebraska. He tried to gain custody of his children with Mitane, who let him take Rosalie back to St. Louis the next year for education at a Catholic school, but refused to let him have Christopher. Lisa included provisions for both Rosalie and Christopher in his will, along with his children by his first wife Polly Chew. Only Rosalie Lisa Ely ( – 1904) survived to adulthood, married and had children.Goodwin, p. 155
Land and purchases of enslaved people in the Louisiana Territory In 1799, Manuel Lisa requested a land grant; according to his letter to the Spanish governor, Manuel wanted it "upon one of the banks of the River Missouri, in a place where may be found some small creek emptying into the said river, in order to facilitate the raising of cattle, and, with time, to be able to make shipments of salted and dried meat to the capital." After being awarded the grant, Manuel Lisa and his wife relocated to St. Louis, where they purchased a home on Second Street near the Mississippi River. In the late 1790s and early 1800s, Lisa purchased numerous enslaved people.List of Documents Contained in the Office of the Register of Ste. Genevieve, kept by Mr. Jean Baptiste Valle, Given to Thomas Oliver, December 5, 1804, Pursuant to the Orders of Amos Stoddard, Miscellaneous Bound MS #1, Transcribed and Translated by Vermer J. Genot, Works Progress Administration, Sainte Genevieve Archives, 1761 – 1854, Missouri History Museum Archives
Early trade expeditions Lisa likely moved to St. Louis to enter the fur trade, the major part of the regional economy. By 1802, he had obtained a trade monopoly from French officials (the territory had traded hands again) with the Osage Nation. (The monopoly had formerly been held by Auguste Chouteau, a French colonist and first settler of St. Louis). But, after the Louisiana Purchase and annexation of the territory by the United States, Lisa's relationship with the new government officials was not as strong. He competed with Pierre Chouteau, a prominent member of the founding family, who had gained a position as a U.S. government Indian agent; Chouteau and his brother had gained their wealth and social positions through the fur trade and as merchants.
Lisa had difficult relations with James Wilkinson, then-governor of U.S. Louisiana Territory. Later found to have been a secret agent of the Spanish Crown, Wilkinson denied Lisa's requests to establish trade routes to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was still under Spanish colonial rule. In 1806, Wilkinson warned Zebulon Pike, undertaking Pike's Expedition, to prevent Lisa's efforts to make business connections to Santa Fe.Chittenden, 127.
Having been stymied by the government and the Chouteau family, Lisa began organizing a trade expedition to the upper Missouri River region. On the first expedition, which departed in April 1807, Lisa and his company of 42 men (including John Colter, George Drouillard or Benito Vázquez) St Louis Cathedral Records; Vasquez papers file, Missouri Historical Society Library: Pierre Louis Vasquez Bible in possession of Douglas Whitney. moved up the Missouri until they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River. After ascending the Yellowstone some , Lisa established a trading post on November 21 at the mouth of the Bighorn River in present-day Montana. Named Fort Raymond for his son (also known as Fort Manuel), it was the first such outpost in the upper Missouri region.
Lisa assigned John Colter of his party to explore the region and trade with the nearby Blackfeet tribe. During his exploration, Colter became the first known European to visit what is now known as Yellowstone National Park; he reported on what was named the eponymous Colter's Hell.
In July 1808, after a successful trading season, Lisa departed Fort Raymond, leaving behind a small party of men for the winter. While operations from the area were profitable for Lisa, the outpost suffered frequent attacks by the Blackfeet. During these years of Lisa's expeditions to the upper Missouri, his wife Polly and children stayed in St. Louis.Sheldon, ?.
Creation of the Missouri Fur Company Upon his return to St. Louis in August 1808, Lisa established the Missouri Fur Company (sometimes referred to as the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company), a joint venture with Jean Pierre Chouteau, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., William Clark, Andrew Henry, Francois Marie Benoit, and other prominent St. Louis fur traders.Chittenden, 126. Jean Pierre Chouteau had also come from New Orleans, so the two men had ties to its French and Spanish Creole community. The company was created as a temporary trust by its founders, designed to either expire or reorganize after three years.
In the spring of 1809, Lisa returned to Fort Raymond with a major expedition, made up of 350 men, about half of whom were Americans, the rest French Canadians and Creoles. They had 13 barges and keel-boats loaded with food, munitions, and articles suitable for the Indian trade, and the trip up the Missouri River was slow. Lisa transferred the fort's contents to the new company, and abandoned the isolated post.
Directing the large force of men, Lisa built the first Fort Lisa (also called Fort Manuel) near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. It was near a Gros Ventres village between the mouth of the Little Missouri and the Knife rivers.Robeson, ?. After the new fort was constructed, Lisa returned to St. Louis in October 1809. The next year, he ascended the river to Fort Lisa and conducted more trading operations. He returned to St. Louis in the autumn of 1810.
In April 1811, Lisa began a final expedition of the Missouri Fur Company's first three years; he had two goals: to locate the then-lost fur trader Andrew Henry, and to transport the remaining property from Fort Lisa to St. Louis. The expedition became famous in its day as the company's barges heading up the Missouri overtook the rival Astor Expedition, led by William Price Hunt for the American Fur Company, which had set out three weeks earlier. Lisa remained among the Mandan and Arikara tribes until Henry came downriver, and they returned to St. Louis together at the end of 1811. In 1811 Lisa was host to the first recorded tourist to present-day South Dakota: Pittsburgh lawyer Henry Marie Brackenridge.
When the Missouri Fur Company was reorganized during the winter of 1811–1812, Lisa became more prominent among its leadership.Chittenden, p. 127 That year he built a brick home in St. Louis as a measure of his success.Primm, Lion of the Valley, p. 83 (Earlier he had built a stone warehouse for his fur company, which stood until the late 1930s, when it was demolished for other development.Primm, Lion of the Valley, p. 454)
In May 1812, Lisa went upriver to Fort Lisa, trading there until his return to St. Louis on June 1, 1813. Lisa happened to be at Fort Lisa in North Dakota when Sacagawea, the historic interpreter and guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, died at the fort on December 20, 1812. She was buried there.Smithsonian.