Manuel de Lisa

Manuel de Lisa was Spanish born, but most of his speech and writing were in French. Nearly all of his documents which the writer has examined are in the French language. Lisa had the great advantage of a bold spirit, a shrewd, trained mind, and a preliminary experience with the Indians which equipped him better than any other man for the position of first white Nebraska promoter. He came up the Missouri River in 1807 and built the first Fort Lisa that year, in the Yellowstone River region. In 1812 he built his second Fort Lisa, about ten miles north of the present Omaha post office, where a sharp rocky point juts from the Nebraska shore into the current of the Missouri River. For thirteen years Manuel Lisa was the leading man of the Nebraska [p.183] region. He traveled over twenty-five thousand miles and spent three solid years upon the Missouri River. He was the first white farmer in Nebraska. He had a hundred men in his employment and around each of his trading posts he had a small farm with cabins for his helpers. In these posts he had hundreds of horses, cattle, hogs, and fowls. He brought to Nebraska the seed of the great squash, the lima bean, the potato, and the turnip and gave them to the Indian tribes.
Lisa had a white wife in St. Louis and married in Nebraska an Omaha Indian girl, named Mitain. This procedure was very common with the fur traders. Many had an Indian wife in each tribe where they traded. The Indian wife bore Lisa a boy and a girl. Both of these children were educated at St. Louis. The boy died in early youth. The writer met in 1908 the children of the girl, who had married a white man at St. Louis and left a numerous family. Lisa's first white wife died and he married a second white wife, August 5, 1818, Mary Hempstead Keeney. This second white wife came with Lisa to Nebraska and was probably the first white woman on Nebraska soil. Lisa rendered great service to the United States by holding the Missouri River Indians at peace with our country during the war of 1812. He died August 12, 1820, and his grave in the Catholic cemetery at St. Louis is marked by a tall monument.

Nebraska: the Land and the People: Volume 1 [p.182] VIII NEBRASKA FROM THE LEWIS & CLARK EXPEDITION, 1804 TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FORT ATKINSON, 1820.

Here is the wikipedia article on Manual Lisa.

The book Manuel Lisa: With Hitherto Unpublished Material by Walter Bond Douglas can be found here.