One of the most vivid impressions of my youth is of a certain evening in the spring of 1865. It was the evening of May 21. Just before sundown the first steamboat of the season, the Yellowstone II, arrived from St. Louis and brought the astounding news that the American Fur Company was going out of business and was selling its various trading-posts, forts and stocks of goods, good-will and all, to private individuals. To most of us in Fort Benton, factor, clerks, artisans, voyageurs, trappers and hunters, it was as if the world were coming to an end. The company--by which we meant the Chouteaus, father and sons--was the beginning and the end of our existence. We revered the very name of it;…
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