Joseph Bijeau

After Spain lost the Mexican territory (present-day New Mexico), trappers like Bijeau moved to Taos where they could trap, trade, and travel east without the hostilities that they experienced in the western United States.

[9][10][11] St. Louis, with an advantageous location at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, was established as a fur trading post in 1764.

The land had been the ancestral territory of a group of 12 to 13 Native American tribes, known as the Illini Confederacy.

The Bijou Hills of South Dakota are named for Louis, who in 1812 established a trading post in the area.

[18] He was very knowledgeable about the trails into the Rocky Mountains, and as far north as Yellowstone and south to Santa Fe.

[15] Major Stephen Harriman Long's expedition was a federal government military and scientific reconnaissance of the Great Plains.

It went along the Missouri River in Nebraska up to the Front Range of Colorado and east across Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

Bijeau was a guide and interpreter for the group that was led by Captain John R. Bell down the Arkansas River[8] and to the Rocky Mountains.

[8] The group consisted of Captain Bell, Lieutenant Swift, Samuel Seymore, and five soldiers,[24] as well as the guides—Bijeau, Deloux and Julien—with Bijeau considered the most valuable because he had been a hunter and resident in the region for a number of years.

[25] They accepted the positions after Long threatened Bijeau and Deloux that Indian agents would be told of their reluctance to act as quides and that he would ask that Canadian fur trappers forbidden from trading with the Pawnee in the future.

[28][29] We discovered a blue strip, close in with the horizon to the west —which was by some pronounced to be no more than a cloud — by others, to be the Rocky Mountains.

Bijeau and Ledoux traveled with them part of the way east, and then returned to their home with the Pawnee on the Loup River in present-day Nebraska.