George C. Sibley

George Champlin Sibley (April 1, 1782 – January 31, 1863) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and politician.

Biography

Early life Sibley was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on April 1, 1782, the son of John and Elizabeth Sibley. Due to his father's frequent travelling, early childhood for Sibley was spent living with his Puritan grandfather, Samuel Hopkins, in Rhode Island. Later on, Sibley moved with his mother to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he received his education and apprenticed as a bookkeeper in the counting house of John Winslow.

Fort Bellefontaine In 1805, through his correspondence with President Thomas Jefferson, Sibley's father was appointed as an Indian agent for the U.S. government in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

While at Fort Osage, Sibley quickly engaged in creating relationships with the neighboring Osage tribes. In 1811, he led an expedition, known as the George C. Sibley Expedition, to improve relations with the Pawnee and Kansa tribes, and also to locate the rumored Jefferson's salt mountain. Instead, he found it in the Salt Plains in northwest Oklahoma. He kept several journals of his travels, but never published them. Sometime prior to his posting to Fort Osage, Sibley purchased an enslaved man named George. In 1812, during a trip to Washington D.C., he purchased a young enslaved women named Betty. Betty and George entered a relationship with one another, and Betty had at least two children, sons George and Edward. In 1819, Sibley sold enslaved man George, husband of Betty and father of George, jr., and Edward to settle an outstanding debt. At one point Sibley claimed ownership of at least six people who he enslaved; two years before the civil war he freed that last remaining two prior to legal emancipation.

Once the War of 1812 began, Sibley briefly moved back to St. Louis because it was feared that the British would entice the local Native American tribes to attack Fort Osage. This, however, lasted briefly, because the Osage tribes complained about having to travel the extra distance to St. Louis for their trade goods. As a result, in 1813, Sibley opened a temporary trading post in Arrow Rock, Missouri, for the duration of the war.

While stationed at Fort Osage, in 1815, Sibley married Mary Easton, the daughter of prominent St. Louis attorney and Missouri's second attorney general, Rufus Easton. Sibley maintained this post until 1822, when the United States decided to formally end its Indian trade system. By this time, most of the Native Americans had been resettled outside of Missouri. After the trading post closed in 1822, George and Mary remained at Fort Osage, where he served as postmaster until the fort closed in 1825.

Santa Fe Trail

Around this time, trade between the United States and the Mexican government in Santa Fe was growing significantly. Consequently, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton presented a petition to Congress to fund a survey of the road to Santa Fe.