Frédéric Dupuis, born in Longueuil in 1818, is credited with playing a crucial role in saving the endangered American bison. His ranch in Fort Pierre, South Dakota is the source of most of the bison farmed today.
The name Fred Dupuis – variously spelled Dupree, Dupris, Dupré and DuPriest – is common throughout the United States and is carried by his descendants. As a young man he left Montreal for Kaskaskia on the Mississippi, where many French Canadians were involved in the buffalo fur trade.
It was an extremely lucrative activity for the whites, who then spread across the vast prairies of the continent. With the help of the U.S. Army, they drove the Native Americans from their ancestral lands and deprived them of one of their vital resources, the bison. Their skins were used as clothing and blankets. And the animal’s body, food: bison tongues were a popular delicacy.
Fred Dupuis, South Dakota pioneer
Dupuis came to South Dakota in 1838 and married a Lakota Sioux woman named Good Elk Woman, who would later become Marie-Anne Dupuis. Of the couple’s nine children, only one could speak English. One interviewee reports that Fred Dupuis spoke French, Lakota and English…sometimes all three in the same sentence. It is not known whether he could read and write, but that did not stop him from being successful.
One of his daughters married the grandson of the governor of the Illinois Territory and nephew of a U.S. Army colonel in 1887, an indication of his social status. The celebrations with indigenous rituals lasted three days and barrels of whiskey and wine were consumed.
When each of his children married, a small log cabin was built next to his father’s house. There were also often a dozen teepees nearby that housed visiting relatives of Marie-Anne.
In the 19th century, tens of millions of bison were killed by Native American and white hunters. In the 1840s, a steamboat captain recounted having to wait a day for a huge herd of bison to cross the Missouri River.
Bison hunting could bring in up to the equivalent of $2,000 a day, according to some estimates. It is reported that Dupuis and his sons killed more than 2,000 people in a single hunting trip.
Bison skulls to be ground for fertilizer, 1892. Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Stop killing them to raise them
According to some authors, when Fred Dupuis saw the number of bison declining dramatically, he decided, at the instigation of his native wife, to raise them rather than kill them. Dupuis and one of his sons are said to have captured seven young bison, male and female. When Fred Dupuis died in 1898, his herd numbered 83 bison.
The Dupuis bison were acquired by James Philip, a Scot who was active in the livestock trade. Philip’s attitude towards bison is also said to have been influenced by his Franco-Sioux Lakota wife, Sarah Laribee.
When his bison herd was put up for sale after his death in 1911, it numbered nearly 900 animals. The state of South Dakota is purchasing 36 for its new Custer State Park, which will later supply other parks and bison sanctuaries across the United States.
James “Scotty” Philip South Dakota State Historical Society
The Return of the American Bison
Since Fred Dupuis’ death, bison numbers have increased to nearly 600,000. That number is still a far cry from the roughly 60 million bison that once roamed the Great Plains.
Custer State Park is now home to 1,400 bison – one of the largest in North America – all from the Dupuis herd.
When businessman and philanthropist Ted Turner (founder of CNN) decided to breed bison in the 1990s, he acquired animals from the Dupuis-Philip herd. He currently owns 50,000 animals on several ranches, making him the largest private bison owner.
Charles Juchereau of Saint-Denis, a member of the Montreal elite, both judge and entrepreneur, obtained from Louis XIV the monopoly on the buffalo hide trade in the “Land of Illinois.” In 1702, he built a fort and tannery on the Wabash River (formerly Ouabache), near the Mississippi, for the hides he purchased from the natives.
He died there in 1703, possibly killed by a malaria epidemic. There is also talk of a massacre: numerous buffalo skins were stolen by native people. Some survivors of his expedition reached Mobile, Louisiana.
For decades, various locations were marked on maps, such as the location of the fort and the tannery. Even today the site is still unknown, as is Juchereau’s gravesite.