Edwin Thompson Denig

Edwin Thompson Denig entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River in 1833. As husband to the daughter of an Assiniboine headman and as a bookkeeper stationed at Fort Union, Denig became knowledgeable about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri and was consulted for information on them by several noted investigators of Indian culture. When Denig was asked to respond to a circular by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, he didn’t simply rely on his own knowledge of the Assiniboines, but instead interviewed his subjects "for an entire year, until satisfactory answers [had] been obtained."