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La Charrette Fur Trading Post Museum and Village

La Charrette Fur Trading Post museum and village is an open air museum near Washington MO. similar (although much smaller in size) to the Museum of Appalachia at Norris, Tennessee. The Museum consists of several historic log building dating from the 1700 and early 1800’s that saved from demolition and relocated to their present site.

The Trading Post

The Centerpiece of the exhibit is the 1790-1820 Fort Charrette Trading Post building. The La Charrette Trading Post was founded by Joseph Chadron1,2 in 1762 and was originally located on the south shore of the Missouri River directly across from La Charrette Village. The Trading Post was completely documented and dismantled after the owner of the original site made plans to demolish the remains. Then the building was authentically reconstructed at the present site adding the associated village houses, and period furnishings.

History

Early Southeastern Missouri

From 1634 to the early 1800's, French trappers and traders, "Voyageurs", missionaries, and militia traveled into the North American interior using the Mississippi, Missouri and tributary rivers. These explorers initially come down from Montreal and Quebec by way of the Great Lakes. Later, after 1719 other explorers began entering from New Orleans.

The French explorations began with Marquette and Joliets' explorations in 1673; La Salle claiming the territory for Prance in 1681 on the Mississippi; the 1699 founding of the Mission in Cahokia near present day St. Louis; the 1717 building of Fort des Chartres; the establishment of St. Genevieve in the 1740's on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, La Charrette on the Missouri River in 1762, and St. Louis on the Mississippi River in 1763 provided a base for the French to enter the west on the Missouri.

La Charrette Village

La Charrette Village was located near present day Marthasville3, in Warren Co. Missouri and was visited by Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 after leaving St. Charles, Missouri. In 1811 La Charette is was reported composed of about thirty families, who hunt and raise a little corn and was for a time the residence of Daniel Boone, after he moved farther up the river from the Femme Osage. The village was later abandoned in the flood of 1841-1842.

La Charrette Fur Trading Post

The river “highways” carried these early French trappers and backwoodsmen in dugout log canoes called "pirogues" deep into the wilderness as they trapped and traded for fur pelts from Indian tribes such as the "Aux Sage", Osage, and Ouimisourite, Missouri. These trappers and the Indians then bartered their pelts for personal and trade items at Fort Charrette from Joseph Chadron, his Osage wife, and mixed-blood Indian Phillips, his assistant. Most trapping was done from the early Fall to Spring when furs were prime. The Chadrons then scraped, stretched, salted, dried and packed in 90 lb. bundles and which were stored in the Fort loft. In the Spring, these bundles were hauled to the river below in the two-wheel ox cart "Charrette", loaded onto Pirogues and then were paddled down the Missouri River to St. Louis to be traded to the Fur Merchants there. Joseph Chadron received in trade for these pelts all the items his family needed for barter and personal use until the following Spring. These fur merchants then shipped the pelts to tanners, clothiers, and hatters in the East and Europe.1

The Fur Trade continued until the 1840’s after which the demand for beaver pelts declined. Silk from china and Nutrea fur increasingly replaced beaver as the material of choice for making top hats. Thus the demand and price for beaver pelts fell. After the 1840’s most voyageurs and mountain men ceased trapping and became river boatmen, trail guides, buffalo hunters or army scouts. Unfortunately the village of La Charrette was destroyed in a flood in 1841-1842 and then the site was abandoned for higher ground.1 The town of Marthasville, Warren Co., Missouri was later built in the area.1,2