Fontenelle's Post

Fontenelle's Post, first known as Pilcher's Post, and the site of the later city of Bellevue, was built in 1822 in the Nebraska Territory by Joshua Pilcher, then president of the Missouri Fur Company. Located on the west side of the Missouri River, it developed as one of the first European-American settlements in Nebraska. The Post served as a center for trading with local Omaha, Otoe, Missouri, and Pawnee tribes.

In 1828 Lucien Fontenelle, a French-American fur trader representing the American Fur Company, bought the post and became the lead agent. In 1832 he sold the post to the US Government, which used it for the Missouri River Indian Agency (or Bellevue Agency) until about 1842.

The Post also served as the first home of Moses and Eliza Merrill, Baptist missionaries who arrived in 1833. The US Indian agent offered them the trading post building as a temporary home. In 1835 the Merrills founded the first Christian mission in Nebraska Territory to serve the Otoe.

In 1822 Joshua Pilcher of the Missouri Fur Company built a fur trading post on the west bank of the Missouri River to trade with the local Native American tribes of Omaha, Otoe, Missouri and Pawnee. Fur trading in the United States was not regulated by governments, and fur traders competed madly for the lucrative business, enticing the American Indians with various trade goods and often liquor. At first Pilcher competed with John Jacob Astor's Cabanné's Post of the American Fur Company (AFC) north of Bellevue. In 1823 Astor bought Pilcher's, bringing it into his monopoly of the fur trade under the American Fur Company.

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