Two letters by W. E. Caton, Indian Trader, Cheyenne River Agency, Dakota Caton Antique Maps

Caton / 1878 - 1879 / [Dakota Territory] Two letters by W. E. Caton, Indian Trader, Cheyenne River Agency, Dakota (Bookshelf 3a, 114961) 2 manuscript letters on "W.E. Caton, Indian Trader" letterhead (total of 6 pages of manuscript text on 5 leaves). Light folds. Overall clean and very good. Boom Times on the Dakota Frontier: W. E. Caton Writes from the Cheyenne River Agency in 1878-79 A pair of fascinating letters by a noted Indian trader William Edward Caton, including one of the earliest letters he penned from Dakota Territory after being appointed Indian Agent for the Cheyenne River Nation. Both letters are on his "Indian Trader" letterhead at the Cheyenne River Agency, Dakota Territory, on the west bank of the Missouri River, just below the mouth of the Big Cheyenne River, roughly six miles from Fort Sully and adjacent to the Army post that had just been renamed Fort Bennett (Dec. 1878). In 1878-79, William Edward Caton (1846-1905), a Joliet-born Grinnell College graduate who had recently been appointed Indian Trader at the Cheyenne River Agency was operating at the nexus of a booming Dakota frontier: military paydays sent soldiers into agency stores, while Lakota families traded hides and furs amid tightening federal controls on commerce. Licensed Indian traders like Caton held the legal franchise to trade with reservation residents under the Trade and Intercourse Act regime (licenses, bonds, and revocation at an agent s discretion), which set them at odds with military traders or sutlers who sometimes tried to poach reservation business: precisely the dispute Caton describes herein, as he planned to lobby Washington to enforce the law. At the same time, the Missouri - Black Hills supply corridor was booming: Fort Pierre - Deadwood freighting had become the principal wagon route by 1879, and the catastrophic Deadwood fire that September only intensified late-season transport and provisioning pressures that traders felt along the river landings from Yankton and Bon Homme. Caton is remembered for commissioning the celebrated Black Hawk Ledger during the severe winter of 1880-81, now widely cited as a landmark of Lakota visual culture. He paid fifty cents per sheet, later binding the 76 drawings into an album that sold at auction in 1994 for nearly $400,000. The album is now part of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art of the Fenimore Art Museum. Some of Caton's papers are held at the Clements Library: Caton family papers, 1849-1886 - University of Michigan William L. Clements Library - University of Michigan Finding Aids Caton's printed letterhead reads: "W. E. Caton, Indian Trader, Cheyenne River Agency, Dakota / Dealer in Furs, Robes, Indian Goods and General Merchandise." The first letter is addressed to Truman A. Mason, a business associate in Joliet and likely an inlaw of Caton's. Mason rose from farm life through work in railroading, stationery, and especially lumber to become a founder and longtime president (from 1891) of the Joliet National Bank, while also serving as township high school board president, city board member, alderman, and a Mason. He married Hannah E. Caton on September 25, 1872. Transcripts of the letters here follow: Cheyenne River Agency Dakota Nov 28th 1878 T. A. Mason, Esq., Joliet, Ills. Dear True. Business has been so good since pay day and for all the time since I arrived that a long letter was almost an impossibility. Since pay day my cash receipts have been Nov. 18 - $360.00 Nov. 19 - $303.74 Nov. 20- $59.00 Nov. 21 - $51.60 Nov. 22-$359.76 Nov 23 $192.10 Nov. 25 $208.35 Nov. 26 $141.4.