Joseph Sondheimer, Fur Trader

Joseph Sondheimer was the first person of Jewish faith to settle in Indian Territory. He came to the territory after the Civil War to trade animal hides.

Mr. Sondheimer was a native of Valkerschlier, Bavaria. He was born on September 22, 1840. He came to America as a youth. Young Sondheimer began his business training as a clerk in stores in Baltimore and Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, he worked as a commissary agent providing supplies for men and horses in the US Army.

Sondheimer began trading in hides for the commercial markets after the war ended. He opened his business in St. Louis, Missouri.

The depopulated area of Indian Territory provided the best source of animal hides because of destruction caused by the war. When riding through the territory in 1867, he heard about the newly established Cobb brothers store on the west bank of the Arkansas River. He authorized the Cobbs to purchase hides on his behalf. He established similar agreements with other merchants along the Texas Road between Missouri and Texas.

Sondheimer also purchased hides from settlers throughout the Cherokee, Creek and northern Choctaw Nations. He established his home and warehouse near the Creek Agency. This put him close to the Arkansas River where he shipped his purchases down stream. He was also near the center of Indian Territory.

Joseph moved his home and storage buildings into the new town of Muskogee after it became a thriving business center. Hides were among the first commodities shipped by railroad from Muskogee. Sondheimer found train shipments reliable.

During fifteen days in the winter of 1881, Sondheimer shipped the following from his large warehouse in Muskogee: 4,500 raccoon, 3,000 skunk, 2,000 opossum and 3,000 pounds of deer hides. Additional pelts shipped on this order included gray fox, beaver, wildcat, wolf, pole cat and otter. The shipment went to dealers in major cities such as Chicago and St. Louis. Two years later, Sondheimer shipped seven railroad cars loaded with cured hides.

Building the warehouse in Okmulgee established him as the largest dealer in hides in Indian Territory. Sondheimer shipped other commodities, too. Pecans were his largest non-pelt staple shipped back east. He also began shipping hides directly to Leipzig, Germany. Many shipments also included wool and, occasionally, prairie chickens and quail.

After more than thirty-five years of buying and selling animal hides, Joseph Sondheimer summed up his observations in 1904 about his business this way. "business will be very poor this year-in fact it has been getting worse and worse now for several seasons. It takes a very wild country or a fairly well settled country to make a good fur business. In the very wild country the fur trader depends upon the skins of big game, while after a country has been fairly well settled the fur trader gets more mink, fox and pelts of small animals."

He continues "it is a fact that is not generally known that such animals valuable for their furs follow settlements. They leave the dense forests and follow on the boarders of small settlements where they are always found in greater numbers than in the thick forests where hunted by Indians."

Joseph Sondheimer's observations are just as valid today. My next-door neighbor saw a skunk in his back yard one evening and I have seen opossum and raccoons scurrying across roads. These are settlement small animals like Sondheimer observed a hundred years ago. He would have smiled knowingly.