Benjamin O’Fallon

Benjamin O'Fallon (1793–1842) was an Indian agent along the upper areas of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. He interacted with Native Americans as a trader and Indian agent. He was against British trappers and traders operating in the United States and territories. He believed that the military should have taken a strong stance against the British and firm in negotiations with Native Americans. Despite his brash manner and contention with the military, he was able to negotiate treaties between native and white Americans. In his early and later careers, he built gristmills, was a retailer, and a planter. He collected Native American artifacts and paintings of tribe members by George Catlin. His uncle William Clark was his guardian and financial backer.

Early life Benjamin O'Fallon was born on September 20, 1793, in Lexington, Kentucky. His parents were James O'Fallon, an Irish immigrant, and Frances "Fanny" Clark O'Fallon, the sister of William and George Rogers Clark. James came to the American colonies in 1774 from Ireland. During the American Revolutionary War, he served in George Washington's army as a surgeon. After the war, he was a general agent for the South Carolina Yazoo Land Company in 1789. He sought business schemes in St. Louis with adventurers, French agents, and Spanish officials, like Edmond-Charles Genêt (Citizen Genêt), George Rogers Clark and General James Wilkinson.

In 1791, he married Frances Eleanor Clark (1773–1825) in Kentucky, with whom they had two sons John and Benjamin. James died a few months after Benjamin's birth. The Clarks were slave-owners. Beginning in his childhood, O'Fallon had chronic health problems of his bowels, spleen, and liver. He was ill-mannered.

Businessman Benjamin O'Fallon moved to the Sulphur Springs area where he established the Indian Retreat Plantation in 1834. He built gristmills, operated a small plantation, and sought other sources of income, but he did not become wealthy like his brother John O'Fallon. He continued to support American fur interests and supported Andrew Jackson's political career; They had become friends during O'Fallon's 1819 trip to Washington, D.C. The painting was auctioned by the Field Museum in December 2011, it sold for $1.3 million, a record for a Catlin painting. He also collected works of art of native peoples. George Catlin wanted to build a national Indian Gallery of each of the tribes, with people in traditional clothing. acquiring 42 paintings. The works of art stayed within the O'Fallon family until 1894 when 35 paintings were purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Catlin also painted O'Fallon's portrait around 1830.

During the early 1830s, O'Fallon purchased a partial skeleton of a fossil marine reptile from a fur trapper. This fossil caught the attention of German prince Maximilian of Weid-Neuwied during his 18321834 travels in the American West. He purchased the fossil and delivered it to University of Bonn naturalist Georg August Goldfuss for research, who published a study in 1845. This partial skeleton is the holotype specimen of Mosasaurus missouriensis.

Personal life In 1823, O'Fallon married Sophie Lee, the daughter of Patrick Lee, an auctioneer from St. Louis. They had eight children, including:

His health continued to decline in the 1830s. He died on December 17, 1842. O'Fallons Bluff of Nebraska is named after him. His correspondence are among the O'Fallon Family Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.