Packing Bison Hides for Trade

Fur press at a trading camp.

After a sketch by Theodore Davis.  Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1869.

The robes purchased by the trader were transported in compressed and bound bales called “packs.” A contemporary source states that a “pack of robes generally embraces ten skins, and weighs about eighty pounds.” Yet the packs might actually contain as many as twelve robes each, and those packs of calf robes, which were smaller, could contain as many as twenty. These robe packs were made with the use of a “press.” At Native camps, a simple press could be fabricated with wood saplings and a chain. A more substantial “screw” press stood in the plaza of Bent’s Fort, its metal components undoubtedly manufactured in the East. Some traders bound their robe packs with rawhide straps or cords, but rawhide was found to attract worms, which then infested the robes themselves. The use of hemp or manilla cords eliminated the worm problem. Several large coils of manilla rope or cordage, as well as one of hemp, do appear on surviving Bent, St. Vrain & Co. invoices. Before leaving the fort, the packs were marked on the outside (the robes appear to have been folded with the hair-side in before pressing) in some way to identify ownership. Along with cordage, “marking brushes” are also found on the company invoices.

It is unclear how much attention, if any, was given to sorting the robes before baling at Native camps. If little was done in this regard in the field, then certainly the packs were opened after their arrival at Bent’s Fort and carefully sorted as to quality, size, and quantity. Surviving correspondence of the American Fur Company dating to the 1830s reveals that proper sorting was critical for successful sales to dealers in the East. The company advised their associates in St. Louis against sending packs divided into all “seasonable” and all summer robes, for the summer robes by themselves were “difficult to dispose of...at even their relative value.” Instead, it was recommended that the packs be made up of eleven seasonable and one summer robe each until the supply of summer robes was exhausted. As for the calf robes, the company advised that they be shipped in packs of twenty each, with a ratio of two summer robes to eighteen seasonable. Above all, consistency had to be maintained. “It is of vast importance to preserve the general character of the Robes,” cautioned Ramsay Crooks in 1838. “If a Summer, and a very short-haired Robe, are found in a Pack of 11 & 1, suspicion attaches to the whole parcel, though that may be the only pack in a hundred containing a skin of doubtful character.”

The general categories of seasonable and summer robes were divided even further by grade and type. Robes were graded as either first, second, or third quality. William Boggs writes of robes that “were very superior and known among the traders as silk robes; they were very fine haired and shined like satin, of a slightly lighter color, and would sell for double what a common robe would.” Within all the above grades could be found a number of robes that were judged to be “soiled,” and this fact, naturally, lessened a robe’s value. Some robes came beautifully painted with Indian designs or decorated in colorful patterns of porcupine quills (on the flesh side), but they were a very small proportion of the total marketed. “The painting and decorating of a robe is the work of much time,” explained Theodore Davis. “[It] increases the price of a robe, and is generally only expended upon a robe that is to be used in the family, and not a means of obtaining sugar, coffee, calico, and other coveted articles.”

All the robes acquired by Bent, St. Vrain & Co. during the winter months, including those from their trade at Fort St. Vrain on the South Platte, were gathered at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas and, along with various packs of peltries, loaded into freight wagons in the spring for shipment east. According to Thomas Farnham, the operation of this annual caravan fell to one of the firm’s principals and from fifteen to twenty employees. The wagons, drawn by both oxen and mules, numbered from ten to fifteen, depending on the size of that year’s shipment.

Buffalo robes, like any other product in a market economy, were subject to the forces of supply and demand (and the manipulations of the American Fur Company, which made great efforts to control the robe market in the East). Consequently, prices fluctuated from year to year. English sportsman and adventurer Charles Augustus Murray, who hunted buffalo with the Pawnees in 1835, offered the following estimates as to robe values: “a good one is worth, at any of the Missouri agencies, three dollars and a half; at St. Louis, five; and at one of the Atlantic cities, from six and a half to ten, according to the quality.” Capt. Lemuel Ford of the First U.S. Dragoons, who visited Bent’s Fort in 1835 as part of the Henry Dodge Expedition, wrote in his journal that the robes acquired by Bent, St.Vrain & Co. brought five and six dollars in St. Louis. The prices quoted by both Murray and Ford, however, appear to be high, or else they represent a robe’s retail value. Robe traders such as Bent, St. Vrain & Co. did not have retail outlets in St. Louis or any other Eastern cities; their robes were marketed through larger firms, who in turn sold robes to various dealers, receiving a commission for their efforts. The American Fur Company, for example, marketed the robes of Pratte, Chouteau & Co. of St. Louis, by far the largest supplier of buffalo robes in the United States in the 1830s. From 1835 to 1839, the American Fur Company offered the “11 &1" packs of Pratte, Chouteau & Co. at between $4.00 and $4.75 per robe (these are East Coast prices). The only robes to bring more than $5.00 apiece (excluding the decorated robes discussed above) were seasonable robes of “Extra Size.” Beginning in 1839, Bent, St. Vrain & Co. sold its robes through Pratte, Chouteau & Co. and its successor, Pierre Chouteau, Jr. & Co. Previous to this time, it appears that Bent, St. Vrain & Co. sent their robes to Powell, Lamont & Co., competitors of Pratte, Chouteau & Co.

In 1842, Pierre Chouteau Jr. & Co. credited Bent, St. Vrain & Co’s account in the amount of $2.70 for each regular seasonable and summer robe (presumably an agreed upon average) and $1.25 for each summer and seasonable calf robe. The total for their buffalo robes came to $7,790.30. Even at the these prices, robe traders such as Bent, St. Vrain & Co. probably turned a good profit, although perhaps not as great as has been imagined. Lemuel Ford made the disapproving comment that Bent, St. Vrain & Co. acquired each robe “for about 25 cents worth of goods.” William Gordon admitted that if one looked only at the cost of the goods versus the value of the robes, traders commonly enjoyed a 200 to 2000 percent profit on every exchange. However, Gordon argued that the “real profits” fell far short of the minimum percentage because of the “heavy expenses which the trader has to incur in carrying on his business.” According to Gordon, the “expenses incident to the prosecution of the fur trade are immense, and far beyond those of any other business that American citizens are engaged in according to the amount of capital employed.” He mentioned specifically the great number of hands required to conduct the trade.

Bent, St. Vrain & Co. certainly had its share of expenses. Its payroll at times numbered some sixty men, including traders, clerks, hunters, cooks, teamsters, craftsmen, livestock herders, and adobe plasterers; some employees performed more than one duty. Then there was the cost of the wagons and livestock used to transport the robes eastward. Shipping of the robe packs on board steamboats to St. Louis added another expense. If the firm purchased insurance on their robes and pelts for the steamboat voyage, a common practice, this also cut into profits, as did any damage to the robes from worm infestation along the way. As already noted, Bent, St. Vrain & Co.’s account books have not survived, so it is impossible to determine precisely what the firm realized on their robe trade from year to year. However, Alexander Barclay, superintendent of stores and bookkeeper at Bent’s Fort from 1838 to 1842, wrote in 1840 that his employers “made an annual return of from twenty to forty thousand dollars in peltries collected from the Indians, chiefly buffaloe robes.” We must assume that such returns were acceptable, for otherwise Bent, St. Vrain & Co. – its partners all sharp businessmen – would not have continued in the trade.

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Content adapted from Mark L. Gardner's 2004 NPS Historic Resource Study: "Bent's Old Fort on the Arkansas."