ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 28 (Spring 1969), p. 28
Traders and Factories
on the Arkansas
Frontier, 1805-1822
By WAYNE MORRIS
University of Oklahoma
- A LITTLE KNOWN ASPECT OF EARLY ARKANSAS HISTORY WAS THE OPERATION WITHIN ITS borders of the United States factory system. One of the expressed purposes of this system was to carry on the fur trade with Indians, thereby protecting the Indians from contacts with white private traders. This purpose was never successfully achieved in early Arkansas; my paper explores the reasons for this.
Originating in 1795, the United States factory system had several objectives. Among them was the elimination from the Indian trade of foreigners, whisky runners and corrupt entrepreneurs. To accomplish this goal managers of trading houses, known as factors, attempted to make the Indians dependent on government trade goods. And besides being instructed to win the Indians' friendship, these representatives were told to teach them agricultural techniques. If civilized, they would be less of a nemesis.
- Writing in 1803 to the Governor of Indiana Territory,
William Henry Harrison, Thomas Jefferson mentioned some of the above points.
And he added that "at our trading houses we mean to sell so low as
merely to repay us cost and charges so as neither to lessen or enlarge
our capital; this is what private traders cannot do, for they must gain;
they will consequently retire from competition." (1)
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- 1. Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, Washington, February 27, 1803, in Clarence E. Carter,
- ed. and comp., Territorial Papers of the United
States (26 vols., Washington; G. P. O., 1934----),VII:91. Hereafter
cited as Carter, comp. and ed., Territorial Papers.
