Antoine Robidoux

Robidoux spent more than a decade managing both trading posts and exploring the Western interior. He is especially well known for having carved a famous rock inscription ^[6] on a wall of Utah's Westwater Canyon during this time. Likely ascending a trapper's trail from the canyon's mouth on the Colorado River, Robidoux left the following record of his presence engraved on a sandstone bluff:

The inscription was not again brought to public attention until 1933, when Charles Kelly first photographed it.^[6] It has since yielded many interpretations in attempts to more accurately pinpoint the precise dates of Robidoux's operations in the area. The most direct translation from the French reads "Antoine Robidoux passed here 13 November 1837 to establish a trading post at the Green OUWIYTÉ River", but the accuracy of this translation has been a matter of controversy among historians.^[2]

Specifically, it has been suggested that the word "Wiyté" was actually intended to read "Winté", and that deterioration has made the appearance of the third letter ambiguous; though the Green and the White are both names for rivers in Utah, "Winté" may instead be a reference to the Uinta River, which was at the time commonly called the "Winty". If this alternative translation is correct, then the inscription appears to suggest that Robidoux had not yet established a trading post on the Uinta River by 1837. This contradicts evidence that he purchased and rebuilt the Reed Trading Post on the Uinta River in 1832, five years earlier.^[6][2]

A simple solution is that the year engraved in the inscription has also been misinterpreted, and that the original message reads "1831" instead of "1837"; this would be a logical fit with the notion that Robidoux may have been searching for a place to establish a new trading post in late 1831, shortly before he eventually did so when he bought the Reed Trading Post. Yet there is evidence that Antoine Robidoux was actually in Missouri selling furs and procuring supplies in November 1831, making it impossible for him to have carved the inscription at that time.^[2]

A third solution is that 1837 is actually correct and that Robidoux was, in fact, planning to build a third, unidentified trading post in a new location at the time, which either never materialized or was built and subsequently lost to history.^[2]

There's no space between the"OU" and the "WIYTÉ" words on the inscription they form only one word "OUWIYTÉ" reading in French pronunciation "Uweetah" or "Uintah" closest spelling in English writing. It also make sense as the Uintah River is the closest affluent on the green River ("RV. VERT" on the inscription).

1837 seems also the best date interpretation since the French Canadians and pioneers never wrote the number Ones like in France to avoid misinterpretation between Ones and Sevens. If Robidoux wanted to write 1831, he would have carved the first "1" exactly like the last "1" which is clearly not the case.

Both Fort Uncompahgre and Fort Robidoux were evidently attacked and destroyed by Utes in 1844, just as the fur trade was declining with changes in the European market.^[5] These circumstances prompted Robidoux to quickly abandon his fur enterprise and return east to St. Joseph. Over the next decade, he worked in various capacities as an emigrant guide and a U.S. Army interpreter. In June 1846, Robidoux enlisted as an interpreter with General Stephen W. Kearny's expedition to California during the Mexican–American War. He was severely wounded at the Battle of San Pasqual in December,^[7] and later applied for a government pension.^[6]

Robidoux died in 1860 in St. Joseph, Missouri, at the age of 65.^[6]