Lewis & Clark

As I reread about Lewis and Clark in the book Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, I find it interesting the number of  white people that were living with the Indians near the Mandan Villages in present day North Dakota when Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804.   Many were French Canadians, some British fur traders and a couple of Americans.    Some of the French Canadians were descendent of French fathers and Indian mothers, either from Quebec or from the plains Indians.    Sergeant Patrick Gass, a member of the Lewis and Clark party, notes in his journals that many of the Indian children in the Mandan Villages had fair hair.  The Mandan Villages were a great trade center between different Indian tribes of the plains and fur traders from Canada decades before Lewis and Clarke arrived.   There were trading posts established by the Hudson Bay Company as far west as present day Alberta, in western Canada before Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountains on their way to the Pacific.   How many British fur traders ever ventured into the upper Missouri River country near the Rocky Mountains before Lewis and Clarke is unknown.  Some may have perished from the cold winters or killed by hostel Indians.   There is some speculation by Ambrose that if Lewis and Clark had not succeeded in their expedition much of the upper Missouri River might have become part of Canada.