He was the owner and operator of several fur trading posts essential to the development of the Nebraska Territory and a thriving ferry business.

They joined other ethnic French in migrating to the growing town of St. Louis after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 by the United States.

[4] That company was owned by renowned American fur baron John Jacob Astor, who established a monopoly in the industry.

Sarpy next worked for his brother's father-in-law, John Pierre Cabanné, who ran Cabanne's Trading Post.

Some of their ancestors had migrated to the new settlement of St. Louis in the late eighteenth century from farms in western Illinois.

They left when the latter area was transferred from French to British control following Great Britain's victory over France in the Seven Years' War.

[7] Sarpy later established a trading post and supply point for white settlers and pioneers on the Iowa side of the upper Missouri River.

Sarpy moved westward the next year, and in 1837 he established Fort Jackson on the upper South Platte River in present-day Colorado.

At Fort Jackson, the two traded tin ware, traps, clothes, blankets, powder, lead, and whiskey for pelts.

Apparently members of Andrew's family had earlier been pronounced free by a verdict of the circuit court of St. Louis and St Charles county.

Through the next year, he ferried migrating Mormons across the river and also sold them supplies for the rest of their westward trip.

Following the United States' negotiation in 1854 of a treaty by which the Omaha people ceded their land in Nebraska, that year Sarpy was among the group that laid out the town of Bellevue.

Ni-co-mi had been the consort of the American surgeon John Gale, who had been stationed at Fort Atkinson in Nebraska.

As an adult, Mary Gale (also known as Hinnuaganun, or One Woman) married Joseph LaFlesche, a Métis fur trader of Ponca and French descent.