Kenneth McKenzie

Who was Kenneth McKenzie?

Kenneth McKenzie was nicknamed the “King of the Missouri”, for as a fur trader for American Fur Company in the upper Missouri River valley, he controlled a territory larger than most European nations.

McKenzie was a Scot by birth, a Canadian immigrant as a teenager. He became a clerk for the North West Company, learning the fur business. Losing his job when his employer was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, McKenzie traveled to St. Louis in 1822, applied for US citizenship and joined the Columbia Fur Company, heading it by the mid-1820s. While he was at fort union he married an Indian woman but later in his life he married a woman named Marry Marshal.

American Fur spent years negotiating, and finally met McKenzie's demands in 1827 to buy Columbia Fur. It was renamed the "Upper Missouri Outfit" division of American Fur, and in 1828, McKenzie went up the river to lead the fur trade, building Fort Union near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.

Fort Union was ideally situated to dominate the final years of the beaver pelt trade and the beginning of the buffalo hide trade, and many tribes dealt with McKenzie.