The
Record
Volume 13, Number 2
Newsletter of the Friends of the Missouri State Archives
Fall 2003
Native American Court Cases Added to Online Archive A Mascoutan Indian man is tried for the murder of an Indian woman; a trader is charged with illegally selling whisky to members of the Missouria Indian nation; a slave sues for her freedom on the grounds that she is the freeborn child of a Blackfoot Indian mother. These are just some of the stories found in a newly digitized set of early nineteenth century court documents from the files of the St. Louis Circuit Court involving Native Americans. Twenty-seven cases dating from 1800-1848 will be the most recent group of digital records to be made available to researchers on the widely successful St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project website. The project is a collaborative effort between the Missouri State Archives, the St. Louis Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, and the American Culture Studies Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Initiated in 1999, the St. Louis Court Historical Records Project launched its website in July of 2002 with the release of eighty-two courts cases involving members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Matt Blunt announced the addition of the nation’s largest series of slavery freedom suits to the website. Ultimately, over four million pages of original court documents are expected to be made available to researchers
as a result of the project. In this most recent set of court documents related to American Indians, several files concern trade activity between European Americans and Indians on the Missouri River. The earliest among these are French documents related to legal disputes that took place from 1800 to 1802, before the Louisiana Purchase.
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Tribes mentioned in trade cases include many of those living along the lower Missouri River in the early nineteenth century; Pawnee, Kansas, Omaha, Otoe, Ponca. European Americans listed in these suits include such famous trade barons as Manual Lisa, John Jacob Astor, and Joseph Robidoux. Some files concern criminal cases such as murder and the unlawful sale of liquor to Indians, while others involve Indian interpreters suing for unpaid wages. One of these last cases was filed on behalf of the estate of Pierre Dorian, Sr. for his work with the Indian Department. Dorian also served as an interpreter with the Corps of Discovery.
The Omaha are just one of the Indian nations mentioned in a series of court cases to be made available on the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project website. Omaha Indians, by Karl Bodmer, 1833, from Reuben Gold Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 1903.
Though small in number, these cases are significant in that they help to fill gaps in our understanding of Indian relations at a time when the United States was just beginning to expand into the Trans-Mississippi West.
To access these records, and others from the St. Louis Circuit Court, visit the project website at: http://aslearning.wustl.edu/CourtRecords-Dev/index.cfm