1804-1806 - Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) set out in May 1804 to explore and map the American West. Lewis and Clark were accompanied by a crew of men, and later, the Shoshone Indian guide and interpreter Sacajawea (also spelled Sacagawea) and her infant son. Lewis and Clark travelled by river and by land from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Oregon coast (Fort Clatsop), and back again. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis to head an expedition to explore the newly-bought Louisiana Territory in order to further commerce (trade). Jefferson also wanted information on the plant and animal life of the American West. This was the first official expedition to cross the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis chose Clark as the co-leader of the expedition; the two men had been friends since childhood. Sakakawea aids Lewis and Clark Expedition. Sakakawea was a Shoshoni woman married to a French trader, Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau was hired as an interpeter and guide. Sakakwea became invaluable to Lewis and Clark with her knowledge of the land and surroundings.

1807 - Ensign Pryor

First engagement between US troops and Indians in South Dakota was the fight of Ensign Prior's men with the Arickara in 1807. Ensin Nathaniel Pryor lost 19 men in the first recorded battle in South Dakota between whites and Indians. Pryor attempts to conduct Big White the Mandan chief who visited Washington with Lewis and Clark to his home and is attacked and driven back by the Rees.

1808 - St Louis Missouri Fur Company

Manuel Lisa for the St Louis Missouri Fur Company secured safe passage for Big White to his home in North Dakota. Manuel Lisa finds the Reees are friendly.

1811 - Fort Manuel

(1772–1820), North American fur trader, born in New Orleans; led first important expedition up the Missouri 1807 and built Fort Manuel at mouth of Bighorn River; with Andrew Henry, Jean Pierre Chouteau, and others founded Missouri Fur Company (1808–9) and built Fort Lisa near mouth of Big Knife River in North Dakota; erected Fort Manuel in South Dakota 1812; Fort Manuel was established by Manuel Lisa and Toussaint Charbonneau on the banks of the Missouri River right below the present day Kenel, South Dakota.

1811 - Astorian Party

The Artorian party go up the Misssouri to the Grand River where they buy horses of the Rees and go thence up Grand River toward Pacific.

1811-December 21 - Death of Sakakawea

A fur trader at Fort Manuel, an outpost owned by fur mogul Manuel Lisa, apparently recorded her death in his journal on Dec. 20, 1812.

John C. Luttig wrote that Charbonneau's wife, a Shoshone woman, "died of a putrid fever." He went on to write "she was a good and the best woman in the fort, aged abt 25 years."

Fort Manuel, now underwater, was near present-day Kenel, S.D., just south of the North Dakota border on the Standing Rock Reservation.

Fort Manuel was rebuilt by Kenel District in 2000.

1813 - Subagent for Missouri

Manuel Lisa made subagent for Missouri River Sioux and keeps them friendly to American interest.

1823 - Ashley Fur trading Company attack by Arikara

Arikara Indians attack a fur trading party led by a General Ashley. Twelve of the fur traders were killed and eleven wounded. This fight is one of the first fights between Indians and whites in South Dakota.

News of the attack on the Ashley party resulted in the launching of a punitive expedition against the Arikaras. The expedition was under the command of Col. Henry Leavenworth. The troops consisted of six companies of the 6th U.S. Infantry and several groups of fur traders.
Colonel Henry Leavenworth, commander of the fort at the time, took 200 soldiers to the Arikara village. The troops shelled the village with a cannon for several hours. However, the damage was slight, and the Indians suffered few casualties from the six-pound shells. After Colonel Leavenworth decided the Akikara had suffered enough, he attempted to obtain a pledge from them of their future good behavior. After a truce was called to discuss the issue, most of the Indians slipped out of the village and escaped.

1823 - Jedediah Smith

1823 – Jedediah Smith made a prayers for the wounded at the mouth of the Grand River, S.D.
Jedediah Smith, was born June 24, 1798, at Bainbridge, New York. While still in his teens, Jedediah joined a fur-trading expedition to the Rocky Mountains, becoming one of the original "Ashley Men," trappers under the command of William Ashley. He continued in the Rocky Mountain fur trade for more than a decade.

Jedediah and his party of trappers spent the winter of 1823-24 with a band of Crow Indians who told him how to reach Utah's Green River. In mid-March 1824, his company rediscovered the South Pass -- a passage to the Northwest through present-day Wyoming -- and descended into the Green River area for the spring hunt.

In July 1825, Jedediah attended the first Mountain Man rendezvous at Henry's Fork then accompanied William Ashley back to St. Louis with the season's bounty of furs. En route downriver, Ashley took Jedediah as partner to replace the retiring Andrew Henry.

In the spring of 1826, Jedediah went ahead of the company's westbound pack train to arrange for that year's Mountain Man rendezvous, to be held in Cache Valley. That August, he led 17 men to appraise the trapping potential of the region south and west of the Great Salt Lake.

This expedition took him along the route of present-day Interstate 15, the entire length of Utah, to the Virgin River and its eventual confluence with the Colorado River. He followed the Colorado south to the villages of Mojave Indians, then turned his band westward across the Mojave Desert. When he and his band arrived at San Gabriel Mission near present-day Los Angeles, they became the first Americans to cross overland to California, entering from the east.

Blocked by the suspicious Mexican governor of California, Jedediah changed his plans to explore Oregon and journeyed to the American River near Sacramento instead. In the Spring of 1827, he left his party on the Stanislaus River, and taking two trappers, traversed the Sierra Nevada Mountains over Ebbetts Pass. He then crossed the Great Basin Desert through Nevada, roughly following the route of present-day US Highway 6.

His band reached the Utah-Nevada border near present Grandy, Utah, continued on to Skull Valley and reached the south tip of the Great Salt Lake two days later. By the time they arrived at the 1827 Mountain Man Rendezvous at present-day Laketown, they had become the first American to return from California by an overland route.

Later in 1827 Jedediah, with 18 men, retraced his steps from Great Salt Lake to southern California. But this time, Mohave Indians attacked his party while crossing the Colorado River, killing 10men and capturing all the horses. The remainder made their way to California and into the clutches of Mexican officials waiting to incarcerate them.

Legal issues finally resolved, his band spent the winter of 1827-28 in the San Francisco Bay area. In the spring of 1828, after traveling north up the coast to Oregon, their encampment was attacked by Kelawatset Indians near Smith's Fork on the Umpqua River. The four survivors of the attack, including Smith, finally reached Canada's Fort Vancouver in mid-August 1828, where they spent the following winter.

In March of 1829, Jedediah journeyed east, arriving in August at Pierre's Hole, site of that year's Mountain Man Rendezvous. At the following year's 1830 rendezvous on the Wind River, Jedediah and his two partners sold their trapping interests to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and became involved in the Santa Fe fur trade.

On May 27, 1831, while en route to Santa Fe, Jedediah Smith was surrounded and killed by Comanche Indians at a water hole near the Cimarron River. His body was never found.

1825 - Treaty of 1825

1825 - General Henry Atkinson and Major Benjamin O’Fallon met with a number of Missouri River tribes to establish treaties of peace and friendship. In actuality the United States wanted to curtail the British trading with tribes in the area. Treaty negotiated with Teton, Yankton and Yanktonai at Fort Lookout along Missouri River on June 22, 1825. In the treaty the Indians acknowledged the right of the U.S. to regulate trade and intercourse with them, promised to return horses stolen from Americans, and promised not to furnish guns to tribes hostile to the U.S. In return, U.S. promised to provide friendship and protection, to furnish licensed trader in their territory.
This treaty was negotiated by William Clark and Manuel Lisa
A treaty is established between the U.S. and the Oglala branch of the Teton Sioux (Lakota) regarding fur trade, signed for the Oglala by Standing Buffalo (aka Standing Bull). The 1825 treaty states that the Sioux and Oglala "...reside within the territorial limits of the United States, acknowledge their supremacy, and claim their protection. The said bands also admit the right of the United States to regulate all trade..."