Solving a Mystery from a Lakota Winter Count

Pre-Columbian, colonial, and territorial history of the central region of North America is underrated. While it is true that North Dakota and surrounding areas have a written history only dating back to the 17th or 18th century, the tribal winter counts, mostly used by the Lakota people but also others, provide details about this history that are often very intriguing to Lakota and non-Lakota readers alike.

Winter counts are not written records in the sense that they are not made of words from writing, but they are very helpful guides for understanding the history of a region or tribe. If you don't know, a winter count is a series of images traditionally drawn on a bison hide that record a significant event that happened each "winter", as in the time from first snowfall to the next first snowfall, which I suppose is often from one October to the next October. There is a book called The Year the Stars Fell that has the images and corresponding captions from several Lakota winter counts. I wish I had that book right now, but from what I remember, the whole 19th century is well covered and most or all of the 18th century is well covered too. Many of the winters in the counts describe a significant battle, epidemic, feast, or famine, which are usually about a sub-tribe or band of Lakota (obviously) or their neighbors. Other winters are recognizable events from broader history, such as the intense meteor shower in 1833 or Custer's demise in 1876. As winters go into the 19th century, there are more mentions of wasichus (often translated as "white people" but also includes any other newcomers to North America). As a wasichu myself, some of the winter counts have figures I recognize, but some wasichus have a mysterious identity and you would think they would be included in local history books, but they aren't (for the most part).

One of the mysterious figures in the Lakota winter counts is called Little Beaver. He shows up in a few winters, mostly in connection to his trading post that blew up and, according to some, took his life in the process. This prompted me to go down a historical rabbit hole in the summer of 2023. Who was this person, and which trading post was this that blew up?

Winter count by The Flame, created 1877. The winter when Little Beaver's trading post burned down is number 24.

First, I started looking for which year the explosion might have happened. I noticed that there can be some discrepancy in the order of winters between some winter counts; some winter counts matched the explosion of Little Beaver's trading post to as early as 1808 and as late as 1811. Nonetheless, I started deep-diving in South Dakota histories of the fur trade and colonial times. Fur traders generally set up shop on the Missouri River, but which trading post was it?

I started looking also for any forts which were said to have burned down. That was key. I had no luck until I saw on a Wikipedia article about the history of South Dakota that there was a post called Fort aux Cedres which burned down in 1810. That was a great clue! Now I just had to figure out whose fort it was.

The answer to the identity of the man who set up Fort aux Cedres was actually found in the journals of Lewis and Clark. That expedition passed the fort on the way up the Missouri, and by then it was already abandoned but not burnt. This is what William Clark said about it (in his usual bad spelling) on September 22, 1804: "Near the upper part of this Island on its S. Side a Tradeing fort is Situated built of Cedar—by a Mr. Louiselle of St Louis, for the purpose of Tradeing with the Teton Bands of Soues (or “Sieux”) about this Fort I saw numbers of Indians Temporary Lodges, & horse Stables, all of them round and to a point at top".

Historians recognize the name "Louiselle" to refer to Regis Loisel, an ethnically French fur trader during the Spanish regime in the Louisiana Territory. He was one of the few fur traders of the time that dared trade with the Lakotas, who had a bad reputation at the time. So was Regis Loisel the man identified as Little Beaver among the Lakotas? Some Lakota historians have mentioned that Little Beaver "was well liked and his post flourished" (Pekka Hamalainen, Lakota America, p. 150). If Regis Loisel was the man who ran the post, surely he was Little Beaver. Further verification came for me when I saw an interpretive sign marking the location of Fort aux Cedres (on an image on Google Maps - I haven't actually been there yet) which says that "Loisel was called Little Beaver by the Indians".

There is, however, one detail that is confusing. Most winter counts describing the explosion of Little Beaver's trading post say that he died in the explosion. Regis Loisel, however, died in late 1804, not 1810 when the trading post exploded. It could be that Little Beaver was an employee of Loisel who worked at the trading post, but I haven't found any records of Loisel having any employees, and it would seem strange for Little Beaver to be mentioned and not his hypothetical employer. Maybe Loisel died and later generations of Lakotas conflated his death and the destruction of the trading post into the same event? Who knows, but I am satisfied with declaring that Little Beaver was in fact Regis Loisel, a fur trader apparently more significant to Lakota history than American history.