Fort Belle Fontaine, built in 1805, was the first U.S. military post west of the Mississippi River in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and served not only as a military stronghold but also as a gathering place in the wilderness, especially because it included an American Indian factory or trading post. Officers and enlisted men and their families, passing soldiers, settlers from the French and Spanish eras and from east of the Mississippi, westbound fortune seekers, trappers, traders, businessmen supplying provisions, and members of various Native American tribes all came there. In 1809 Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Bissell, a Revolutionary War soldier from Connecticut, took command and, finding the original buildings in disrepair and the site endangered by its position at the bottom of a bluff, built a new fort on the bluff, completed in 1811 with 30 hewn-log buildings on stone foundations and enclosed by blockhouses and palisades in a rectangle atop the Missouri River bluffs. During the War of 1812 the site was threatened by Native Americans in the pay of the English, and in the summer of 1814 three operations against the British and Sauk-Fox Indians were conducted from the fort. In July 1815 its soldiers provided security for the Indian council at Portage Des Sioux, where representatives of several tribes joined peace negotiations with Missouri Territory Governor William Clark. Originally called Cantonment Belle Fontaine, it served as a trading post for local Sauk-Fox and other Native American tribes until the factory was removed in 1808, with some trade goods sent to Fort Osage and the rest shipped to Fort Madison in Iowa. The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery camped on a nearby island on May 14, 1804, on the first night of their journey west, and after the fort was built in 1805, they camped there again on September 22, 1806, the expedition's final night before returning to St. Louis, where Captain William Clark recorded that after the rain ceased at ten a.m. they went down to the cantonment at Coldwater Creek, about three miles up the Missouri on its southern bank, found Colonel Hunt, Lieutenant Peters, and one company of artillerists, and were kindly received with a salute of guns and a hearty welcome.
