From about 1846 until 1872, an Indian trading house stood near here, built by James Bordeaux. The post was once attacked and set afire by hostile Crow warriors, but friendly Sioux Indians came to the rescue and drove off the attackers. Bordeaux came from a French settlement near St. Louis and, while still a young boy, went west with fur traders. He was active in the fur trade around Fort Laramie from the 1830's until the 1870's, and in the 1840's he hosted the explorer John C. Fremont and the historian Francis Parkman. His name became attached to Bordeaux Bend near Fort Laramie, scene of the Grattan Massacre, and to Bordeaux Creek nearby. Indians brought buffalo robes, furs, and ponies to the post in exchange for guns, powder, beads, blankets, and whiskey, and some of those weapons may have later been used against troops at Fort Phil Kearny and at the Little Big Horn. James Bordeaux's life paralleled the history of the Upper Missouri country from the 1830's to the 1870's.