In 1832, Thomas Sabee, a fur trader who married an Oglala Lakota, ended his life violently and prematurely in the Dakotas.

In 1832, Thomas Sabee, a fur trader who married an Oglala Lakota, ended his life violently and prematurely in the Dakotas. By LANCE NIXON

That January at the American Fur Company’s Oglala Station, the days were short—a frost moon in the tent, in the Lakota way of marking time. Businessman Thomas Estang Sabi placed a candle on the counter for light as he and two assistants put the storage room in order. One of three brothers from a prominent fur-trading family in St. Louis, Sabie joined the tribe and spent the winter at the confluence of the Cheyenne and Rapid Creek (near present-day Black Hills, South Dakota) in exchange for buffalo robes and fur.

Then something happened - maybe a robe or an elbow bumped into the candle, and it fell off the counter onto the merchandise stacked below. For Sabi, the world ended with a bang on January 19, 1832. In a dazzling flash, the wooden house exploded around him, and he landed quickly on the winter ground, scarred and burned, dying. It wasn't long before he was dead, moaning incomprehensible comments in his native French. His more fortunate assistant survived the explosion. It took several days before the outside world knew what had happened.

Sabi had been in the area for less than two years when his fatal accident occurred. According to family legend, his father, Grégoire Sabi, exiled the young man to the North because he had been living a wayward life in St. Louis. The young exile soon married two Lakota wives. "His first wife was the daughter of the chief of the Minneconjo tribe," Sabi's great-great-grandson Clarence Mortenson said in a 2016 interview. She died in childbirth, leaving behind a little girl. So he married my great-great-grandmother — she was the one who raised the two girls (one from each marriage)," Mortenson said. Her daughter, known to the Lakota people as Wasuk Winn White woman), had a Christian name Mary Sabee

By marrying the chief's daughter, the merchant could establish a good relationship with his wife's family, but on January 19, Sabee spent time with the good land and the Lakota people. The time was interrupted by the fallen candlestick. Eight days later, at Fort Tecumseh, a little more than 100 miles east of the Missouri River, news of the accident reached American Fur Society clerk Jacob Halsey. The commissioner recorded his life on the plains, writing in his diary that day that messengers “came from the post office at Oglala with the sad news of Mr. Sabie’s death. The businessman at that station.

Halsey held a similar position in the company and knew Sabi well. In his diary, he had lavish praise for the late trader:

He was interrupted in his prime, coming to Arriving at the eternal home, and being fixed in an unchangeable state, man dies, and where is he? What becomes of the man with whom we saw and conversed not long ago? He is in the tribunal of God. , stating the time, means, and benefits he enjoyed, and accepting his doom. Mr. Sabi was a most useful clerk. His employer will regret his loss.

Sabi was more than a useful clerk. Within days, merchants at Fort Tecumseh, key members of the intricate network of owners who made up the Western fur trade, shared the sad news in letters between January 31 and February 22. During this period, at least seven letters were delivered by courier. The first was a summary of Halsey's tragic events for Pierre "Cadet" Chautau, Jr., a St. Louis merchant who controlled the American Fur West. Its reputation cannot be overstated. A year later, when the company replaced Fort Tecumseh with a new trading post, the superintendent named it Fort Pierre Chautau in his honor. What developed into what is today South Dakota's oldest white community is a testament to the power and influence of American fur itself.In 2017, the city celebrated its 200th anniversary, tracing its origins back to fur trader Joseph La Flamboise, Jr., who established a settlement at the confluence of the Bad and Missouri rivers as early as 1817 a position.

Halsey told Shorto in a letter of January 31 that William Laidlaw, the Scottish Bourgeois (chief trader) at Fort Tecumseh, had just traveled to Oglala to sort things out after the accident. "Mr Sabi was found lying some distance from the building," Halsey added. "About an hour after the explosion he was still alive, his soul escaping into eternity. The other two were seriously injured, but "Currently out of danger."

More details later emerged, including the comforting fact that Sabi likely only lived a few minutes, not a full hour. On January 31, trader Honoré Picot also wrote from Fort Tecumseh to tell trader Jean-Pierre Cabane at a post office in eastern Nebraska that Sabi had been found. The place is far away from the building. The fatally wounded man spoke three times before his death, marveling at the tragedy, begging rescuers to pour water on him and then begging them to give him water.

html On December 15, after returning from the Oglala Post, Bourgeois Laidlaw wrote to Kenney, the company's chief trader at Fort Union (located on today's North Dakota and Montana border). Si McKenzie. Laidlaw told Mackenzie that the overturned candle fell into a 50-pound barrel that had been opened that morning. He added: "It shook three houses in a row and trembled. "Strangely, the people around him escaped unscathed, except for one who had his side scorched."

A week later , Laidlaw responded to a request from businessman Pierre D. Papin for a lock of Sabie's hair to commemorate him. "Your letter came so late," Laidlaw wrote, "that even if it had been received in time for his burial, it would have been impossible to obtain the hair, as it was completely burned off, (he ) was so shockingly disfigured that he barely resembled a human being."

One thing that stood out after Sabi's death was the remarkable efficiency of the Oglala Warriors Association. As Laidlaw said in a letter to businessman David Mitchell on February 15, it was thanks to the warriors that the ruins of the warehouse were not looted. "The conduct of the Indians on this occasion cannot be highly praised," he wrote. "Soldiers (policemen from the Oglala camp) were there to stand guard, gathering goods from all directions, and no men were allowed," he wrote. , woman, or child, not even a dog could approach with impunity."

Laidlaw noted in a follow-up letter to Mackenzie that Oglala delivered the collected cargo to a man with 15 miles. The trading company did business with the Cheyennes (close allies of the Lakota), but not before receiving assurances that the Cheyennes would not get their recycled trade items. "The former were very stubborn about their rights...(and) insisted on getting the goods they wanted," Laidlaw wrote. "Their behavior was so meritorious that I had to accommodate them."

This Won't Be White One last time there is reason to marvel at Oglala. Although little known at the time, even by the employees of the fur companies with which they were traded, they would become of great concern to the U.S. Army in the decades to come. After all, they were the group of Red Cloud Chiefs who won the 1868-68 war against the United States. They were also the band of "Crazy Horse" who led the Union forces that destroyed Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's U.S. 7th Cavalry headquarters at Little Big Point in 1876.

But all this was decades later. In 1832, the Oglalas were a humble group of people illuminated for a brief time by candlelight and a skein of powder that destroyed Thomas Sarby of the American Fur Company.