Often overlooked: Bent’s Fort on the upper Arkansas (??). Trading with many Plains Tribes, tons of trade good poled upriver each year, by the 1840’s tens of thousands of buffalo hides each year sent downstream.
Good times until cholera brung West by the ‘49ers hit.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
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