Bordeaux Trading Post

Parkman's visit shows what that hosting looked like. In June 1846 Bordeaux was running Fort Laramie while the bourgeois, Papin, was away. Handed a letter of introduction, he turned it upside down and passed it to his clerk to read. Parkman called him a stout, bluff little fellow, much inflated by his new authority, and slept in a room with a brass crucifix on one wall and a fresh scalp beside it. Later that summer Bordeaux plied The Whirlwind with presents and talked him out of a war party, warning it would ruin the hunt and the robe trade.

What the plaque says

Bordeaux Trading Post From about 1846 until 1872, an Indian "trading house" occupied a site near here. Built by James Bordeaux, the trading station was once attacked and set afire by hostile Crow warriors. Fortunately, some friendly Sioux Indians came to the rescue and drove off the attacking Crow. James Bordeaux was from a French settlement near St. Louis and while yet a young boy, he went west with fur traders. Bordeaux was active in the fur trade in the vicinity of Fort Laramie from the 1830's until the 1870's. In the 1840's, he served as host to the explorer John C. Fremont and the historian Francis Parkman. He left his name to Bordeaux Bend near Fort Laramie, scene of the Grattan Massacre. His name also survives in the name of Bordeaux Creek, near this marker. The Indian's brought buffalo robes, furs, and ponies to this post to trade for guns, powder, beads, blankets, and whiskey. Some of the weapons may have been used against the troops at Fort Phil Kearny and Custer's troops at the Little Big Horn. The story of James Bordeaux's life is the story of the Upper Missouri country of the 1830's-1870's. Citizens of Chadron Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Fur Trade — steps away
  A museum of what traders and Native nations exchanged, from the oldest known point blanket to a Lakota leader's silver cross, beside the rebuilt Bordeaux trading post east of Chadron.
• The Heritage Center at Red Cloud — 25 mi
  A free gallery of Lakota art on the campus of the old Holy Rosary Mission, where Red Cloud asked for a school and is buried on the hill above it.

More markers nearby

• The Chadron-Chicago Cowboy Race — 3.7 mi
• Chadron State College — 3.8 mi
• The First Church in Chadron — 3.8 mi
• Fort Robinson-Camp Sheridan-Pine Ridge Indian Agency Road — 4.6 mi