The fur trading business was a driving force behind the expansion of trade in many parts of North America.  That was especially true in the Great Lakes region.  The forests, rivers and inland lakes of the Great Lakes area have been a rich and fertile home to many of the best fur-bearing animals. That’s why the area was… and has remained one of the most important sources of fur in the nation. In the early years of European exploration of the North America , the fur trade was an important part of the economy for both the French and English-speaking explorers and traders and the Native American tribes they met.

Mackinac Island sits at the eastern end of the three upper Great Lakes, Superior, Michigan and Huron.  For a long time, Mackinac Island was the center of fur trading operations… first held by the French, then the British… and finally Americans. Trade  extended from there southward on Lake Michigan, westward to the end of Lake Superior and on down the Mississippi River to include much of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The French also used Green Bay, Wisconsin as a major trading center.  For 200 years fur trading was the only commerce among the French and English speaking people in Wisconsin.   

But, the first important contacts with Native Americans who lived near Lakes Michigan and Superior were not by French fur traders but by missionaries.  The Catholic Church’s Jesuit priests kept records of the first meetings between Europeans and Native Americans.  Those records indicate missionaries Pierre Esprit Radisson  and Medard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers met up with angry Chippewa warriors in the vicinity of present day Ashland, Wisconsin in 1654.  And then just a little later they ran into friendly Chippewa people several miles west on Minnesota's north shore.  The first building put up by Europeans on Lake Superior was a hut built by these two missionaries.  It might have looked like this…  although probably not made quite as well.  It was put up on Chequamegon Bay near present-day Ashland, Wisconsin. 

The French pressed westward partly in the hope of finding a westward passage to the pacific ocean.  They established a small village called Grand Portage in what is now northeastern Minnesota.   It began as crude post built by Daniel Greysolon Sieur du Lhut in the year 1679.  The North West Company was formed here.  With successful fur trading, a huge and stockade with a great hall and a number of wooden buildings were constructed in the 1700s.  For more than a hundred years it was the single most important place for commerce and fur trading.  In modern times, the Great Hall was restored as a national historic site.  But it burned.  A replica was built to look as much as possible like the original Great Hall

By the start of 1700s the Native Americans who had lived on the lands around the Great Lakes for centuries began to have problems with the European new comers.  Those problems would get worse and worse.  At first the European traders only wanted the furs that came from the surrounding lands.  But as time went by they wanted the lands themselves, which were home to the tribes and the wildlife. 

 The Beaver was the most popular pelt in the fur industry. It was trapped, killed and the fur skin stretched round to what are still called blankets.  The beaver blankets served as money for Native Americans trading with the Europeans.  With 25 pelts they could buy one gun.  For each additional hide they could get a pound of shot for the guns.  If they wanted to trade for a European cloth blanket, they would have to pay 12 beaver blankets. 

The Tomahawk and other tools or weapons of war had always been fashioned of stone or in some rare cases they were made of raw copper. Often the workmanship was a work of art, much more beautiful than the plain-looking European goods.  But the metal axes made in Europe were more durable.  They didn’t look like much, but they were better and stronger tools.  The Native Americans liked them and paid four skins for each one bought.  Cases of axe heads were brought from England to the new world.  Once in North America, the axe heads and other goods were hauled from Lachine near Quebec by canoe and overland in large packs until they reached Lake Erie.  Then they were put on larger vessels for a trip to Mackinac Island.  Goods that were to go to Lake Superior were transferred at Sault Ste Marie. Items that were shipped to traders along the  Mississippi River and its tributaries were shipped down on the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. This was the territory of the Mackinac Company started by the British merchants on Mackinac Island.

While on the one hand the traders were trading guns, gun powder and lead for bullets to the tribes, at the same time the traders were building forts to protect them from attacks by the very tribes they were selling the weapons to.  Although the exact design is not known this is probably how the fort called Beauharnois looked like.  It was built on Lake Pepin, a wide part of the upper Mississippi river, in 1726. The French burned it as they fled after continuous attacks by tribal warriors.  It was later rebuilt.  It’s presumed that the Fort also had a church.  It would have been the first in Minnesota.  But it’s not certain.  Like so many of the close to 200 posts and forts, built in Minnesota alone, the records have been lost.

The trading posts usually had Guard stations at opposite ends of the stockade.  Since the stockade and buildings inside were all made of wood and open fires were used to cook food and keep warm, the people who lived there were concerned as much about fire as they were attacks by tribes.  Post operators, clerks and other employees as well as visiting traders stayed inside the stockade. 

While on the move between the posts the boatmen who worked for the traders must have lived a mixture of fun and hard work and hard going.  They were required to stay on duty for long hours and guard the traders’ property or they’d have to give up part of their low wages of about $83 a year if something had been stolen.    And if the men were careless and left something behind after they started their day’s journey,  the trader usually refused to let them turn around and get it.  Instead, he would just deduct the value from the wages of the whole crew.  The trader outfitted the boatmen.  They were given cowhide shoes that protected their feet on the rock paths when they had to carry their canoes and cargo around Rapids like this one on the St. Louis River on the Savannah Portage in northeastern Minnesota.  The trader also usually gave his men two cotton shirts, a triangular blanket, and a templine, which worn across the forehead to help carry heavy loads. 

Only on best traveled routes near settlements or posts did the boatmen find wooden walkways over ditches or swamps. Usually they had to wade through waist deep mud and water.  Mosquitoes and black flies plagued them.  Generally acknowledged as the worst was the Savannah Portage that was used to go from the Mississippi to Lake Superior.  This was a part of the territory of John Jacob Astor.  He started the first major American fur operation when he founded the American Fur Company in 1809.   One of his posts was this one at Fond du lac in Duluth, Minnesota. 

One of the men who struggled over this portage wrote in his diary that the going was so difficult the trousers of the men were ripped to shreds and their legs red and bleeding from the sharp sticks and the muskeg.  Muskeg is basically a bog of rotting vegetation that would have been hard to walk through and would irritated the cuts the men had gotten going through the rough terrain.   He noted that the conditions made tempers very short.

Those involved and the inland trade used mostly the North canoe for long distances and heavy loads and the small two-man so-called Indian canoe for short trips.  The biggest canoe, the Montreal canoe,  was used on the Great Lakes.  It was used before Sail driven boats came to the lakes.  

Some of the portages used are still there.  The paths are kept worn down by modern day hikers who don’t have to experience the agony of bearing up under the weight two 90 lb. packs as the boatmen did.  They carried everything from bells to beads, guns, whiskey, wine, and anything else that the Native Americans might want for their furs.  The portages were measured in poses or rest stops,  places where the men took a breather after toting their loads about a third of a mile.  One portage in Wisconsin at Lac du Flambeau was an incredible 45 mi. with 122 poses.  But some of the other portages were so short there were no rest stops. 

When they could find wild game, they shot it for food.  Anything was a welcome change from the day after day diet of hulled corn made it into a soup.  Rather than drag the whole deer, bear, moose or Buffalo back to camp, they just cut away the best meat and left the rest of the animal to rot. Fresh meat was not carried along although bear grease was sometimes mixed to with the corn to make pemmican, a sort of stew.   There was a great deal of waste, Alexander Henry the younger, one of the founders of the North West Company, tells in his journal of killing two Buffalo for four men.  They ate only the tongues and the fatty part of the belly and then continued on their journey.  Two days later completely without food and weak from hunger. 

Beaver pelts went out of fashion and raccoon pelts became the most sought-after fur and the first half of the 1800s.  Experts claim to the best quality came from the Great Lakes… even though the animal was found in many other parts of the United States.  Four million raccoon pelts were shipped overseas in the 1840's most of them to Great Britain. 300,000 mink skins were also sold at $4 a piece.  Even a skunk pelts were desired furs in the late 1880s.  300,000 were caught, skinned and sent to England for the price of a dollar each.  Muskrats were the most numerous animals caught, almost a million a year but then they sold for only 9¢ apiece. 
 
The skins were brought to the trading posts in raw condition. Native American women were hired to scrape off the excess fat and flesh and to dry the skins.  Just about all mammals ranging from weasels to grizzly bears were trapped and some times even swan skins were sold.  In the posts the furs were put into a press and formed into bundles weighing 90 lbs. each.  The wooden presses were crude but they did the job surprisingly well.  This scale found at the fur post at Fond du Lac is typical of the scale used to weigh the bails and it was very accurate.  One of the American Fur Company emblems was also found on the site of the old post.  The seal was fixed on the bails to certify that it was a full 90lb. bail.  Each company had its own seal or brand usually with a motto. 

Connors fur post was typical of the smaller and temporary structures built by the traders at the beginning of the 1800s. This one was on the Snake River on the Minnesota Wisconsin border at Pine City.  The North West Company employed Thomas Connors.  His post flew the British flag.  He and his men and some men from the Chippewa tribe built the 77 ft. long 6 room cabin and stockade in just six weeks in 1804.  The Minnesota historical Society finished reconstruction in 1970 after six summers of work.  Although it seems to be a terrible waste today, the Post was abandoned after a single season of use.  Connors, his wife and his men left it in the spring of 1805.  They gathered their furs, wild rice, and maple sugar that they gotten in trade with Native Americans and headed on down the Great Lakes. 

At most trading posts Native Americans would erect their tepees close to the traders’ fort.  If a warring tribe attacked they would seek protection within the stockade.  In the later years of fur trading men who didn’t work for any one fur company went into tribal lands and often adapted to the life style of the tribes.  They many times would marry tribal women.  From the tribal villages, they learned how to make things like snowshoes and dog sleds.  The Native Americans taught the newcomers how to gather maple sap to make syrup and candy.  The Europeans learned anything they could to make their life easier and safer.

Native Americans used very few furs… just what they needed for blankets or other personal needs.  They thought the Europeans traders were strange for trading goods for them.   Since the Native Americans would wear off the unwanted outer or guard hair, leaving only the soft fur below, just in daily use of their furs, those furs were literally sold off the back of tribal people. 

The business of fur trading left long-lasting effects on the animal life of the Great Lakes today.  In many cases, the traders took too many furs.  Some animal species were wiped out and will never return.  Others like the pine marten are endangered.  The timber wolf killed for its hide, for bounty or out of foolish fairy tale fears was almost wiped out.  In recent years, the wolf population has recovered in small numbers and now lives in parts of its old range.  Packs are in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.   It's no wonder timber wolves were almost wiped out.  In just one season the North West Company reported killing 690 at eight of their posts. 

The lakes and rivers no longer serve as highways for the traders, boatman and Native Americans. The birch bark canoes have been replaced by those of aluminum and fiberglass.  Many of the wrongs imposed on the Native America tribes must still be righted.  More needs to be done to protect the wildlife and the places where they live.  The frontier country of the upper Great Lakes will never be the same as it once was, but the legacy of the first traders the boatman and the Native Americans who showed them how to survive in this region will never be forgotten..