The Far North
The Grand Portage was the Grand Central Station of the Native
Far North. Long before French colonial coureurs
des bois (runners of the woods) entered the region, the Algonquin hauled
their canoes and goods over the 8 mile trail around the falls on the Pigeon
River. At this site on the northwest lip of Lake Superior, people in canoes
traveled to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans with portages past
unnavigable rivers lasting at most a day.
The Ojibwe, an Algonquin speaking tribe, made this land
home. Before contact with the French, they trapped, fished, hunted, farmed, and
gathered food and resources, moving seasonally to reap nature’s harvest. The
Ojibwe used birch bark canoes for fishing, harvesting wild rice, and perhaps
most importantly, transporting copper from Isle Royale and furs from their
forests for trade with tribes far and wide.
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| Birch Bark Canoe in front of the trading post at Grand Portage (Photo by Gary Alan Nelson) |
Writing about these canoes, the French missionary Rene de
Brehant de Galinese observed in 1669: “The convenience of these canoes is great
in these waters, full of cataracts or waterfalls, and rapids through which it
is impossible to take any boat. When you reach them, you load canoe and baggage
upon your shoulders and go overland until the navigation is good….”[1]
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| Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall by Frances Anne Hopkins (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) |
At such a busy center for travel and trade, Grand Portage served
as a gateway for migration, contact, and commerce. Native Americans used it in
their extensive trading networks, and during colonial times, the French accessed
the interiors of North America through this portage.
The French Enter North America
The French brought a unique European culture into the
hemisphere. They founded over a dozen colonies on Caribbean Islands and also
settled Quebec, Montreal, Detroit, Green Bay, and farther south St. Louis, Mobile,
Biloxi, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. In 1608, Samuel de Champlain established
the first permanent French settlement in North America at Quebec, the capital
of New France. During the early colonial period, the French explored and laid
claim to much of the northern and middle parts of North America.
The coureurs
interacted with the native peoples differently. French men often married into native communities, raised
families, and served as cultural brokers as Europeans spread into tribal
ancestral lands. Additionally, while predominantly Catholic, the French did not
evangelize with the same zeal as the Spanish nor the English.
Perhaps the first Europeans to arrive at the Grand Portage were Pierre Esprit and his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, who traveled the area around 1660. A Jesuit missionary, Father Claude Allouez, canoed Lake Superior in 1667 and on his 1670 map of his explorations marked the mouth of the Pigeon River. Then in 1682, René-Robert Cavelier sailed down the Mississippi River and claimed the middle part of the continent for the French, from the upper Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian Mountains. At the edges of these contested empires, disputes flared that sometimes erupted into conflict.
The American Fur Trade
The height of the French fur trade that flowed through Grand
Portage occurred between 1740 and 1745. By the late 1760s, English fur traders
encroached on the French territories. In 1767, the English traded goods with
Native Americans valued at 5,000 pounds sterling and returned the next summer
with 100 canoes crammed with pelts. Captain Jonathan Carver witnessed the
bounty that summer as packages of pelts came down the trail to the depot and
put on larger canoes for transport to Montreal and then to hat makers in
Europe. Among the Europeans at the post, Carver also saw Ojibwe, Cree, and
Assiniboine tribal members.
The French traded for the pelts of beaver, minx, fox, otter,
buffalo, and other animals. These pelts
made hats that were strong, waterproof, and held their shapes. In a damp cool
climate of northern Europe with scant heating, beaver hats provided warmth. In
the 17th and 18th centuries, beaver pelts made the
highest quality hats. For almost two centuries, the Americas provided the raw
material for high fashion in Europe. Over the first 2/3rds of the 18th
century, English factories alone made approximately 21,000,000 high quality
beaver and felt hats from American furs.
The Grand Portage around the Upper Falls on the Pigeon River
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| Map of the portage around the falls of the Pigeon River (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) |
To get the furs to Europe from middle America, canoes piled to
the gunwales sliced through the waters. At unnavigable sections of rivers, coureurs carried their goods and canoes
around the obstacles. For the Grand Portage around the falls of the Pigeon
River, each porter’s load weighed between 160 and 200 pounds. By stooping over
and distributing this heavy load onto the lower and upper back, porters lugged
their goods and canoes over the eight miles of the Grand Portage.\
At Grand Portage, an annual rendezvous occurred each July
when trappers came from all over to trade their year’s haul, buy supplies for
the next year, and party. Some years, 500 men from the fur companies joined the
numerous native peoples encamped at Grand Portage to trade and celebrate.
By the end of the 1600s, 16,000 settlers lived in New France
bunched along the Saint Lawrence River and in parts of Nova Scotia. At the same
time, English colonists equaled around 160,000. The French continued to explore
and expand their trade networks into the hinterlands and competition with the
English grew.
The English Compete with the French
The English Hudson’s Bay Company earned a charter in 1670 to
trap and trade the northlands. The Company governed vast areas of North
America, including all the land that drained into Hudson Bay, totaling 1.5
million acres, or about 15% of North America’s land mass. Headquartered at the
York Factory on Hudson Bay, it grew rich on the fur trade that came out of the
forests.
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| Trading at Hudson Bay Company (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) |
The men working for the fur companies led hard lives. Living
in a harsh climate, isolated from their home country, many married into native
communities. Such marriages often strengthened the bonds between the French and
the Indians. The resultant mixed heritage children called Métis served many roles in the colonial era. They were cultural
brokers between the Europeans and Native Americans, they worked as porters and
paddlers for the various companies, and they supplied food for the traders and
trappers.
Native Americans often traded on credit so that in the
spring, the French returned to pick up the furs as payment for the goods left
the previous fall. A cycle of perpetual
debt sometimes burdened Native Americans as their winter hunt did not retire
the debt owed for the advanced goods. Fostering unreasonable debt and using
alcohol as payment for the furs undermined the traditional cultures of the
Native Americans. John Tanner in the 1790’s told of North West Company traders who
enticed his mother with alcohol to store her furs at their post at Grand
Portage, never to see them again.
From 1689 to 1763, France and England fought four wars of
empire, culminating in the Seven Year’s War (aka French and Indian War) where France
lost its colony in North America. In 1673,
Britain acquired the vast French territories in the far north.
In 1779, nine mainly Scottish businessmen formed the North
West Company to continue the flow of fur to England. Barrels of rum, bags of
corn, rifles, knives, kettles, blankets, needles, tobacco, and cloth flooded
the Northland to entice Indians to trade their catches from the winter. Joseph
Frobisher from the North West Company reported that of its 500 employees, about
half transported goods back and forth from Montreal to Grand Portage while the
rest traveled outward from their base at Grand Portage to acquire furs. The
North West Company successfully competed with the Hudson Bay Company for the
fur business in central and western Canada until 1821, when the two companies
merged.
The Trading Post on Lake Superior
This description of the Grand Portage trading depot in July
1793 comes from the diary of John MacDonell, a North West Company clerk: "All
the buildings within the fort are sixteen in number made with cedar and white
spruce fir split with whip saws after being squared, the roofs are covered with
shingles of cedar and pine, most of their posts, doors and windows are painted
with Spanish brown. Six of these buildings are store houses for the company's
merchandise and furs. The rest are dwelling houses, shops, compting [counting]
house, and mess house - they have also a warf [wharf] or kay for their vessel
to unload and load at. "[2]
Today, the National Monument of the “Great Carrying Place” has a partially
reconstructed late 18th century trading post, the Grand Portage
trail, and Fort Charlotte on the Pigeon River.
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| Reconstructed trading post at Grand Portage (Courtesy NPS) |
The French were intrepid explorers, skilled entrepreneurs, and
innovative cultural brokers. Throughout the north and middle part of the
continent, French coureurs de bois
were often the first Europeans into this vast country. The sparsely populated French
settlements in North America, about 40,000 in the 17th and 18th
centuries, were predominantly male. Thus the French adopted a more cooperative
and embracing attitude about Native Americans. The French voyageurs discovered
ways to trade with and live among different tribes. From Detroit to New
Orleans, from St. Louis to Des Moines, the French contributed a different
culture and fostered different relationships with the land and with the native peoples.
The NPS designated Grand Portage a National Historic Site in
1951 and a National Monument in 1958.
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| Pigeon River Upper Falls by Kenneth Clinton |
Grand Portage National Monument
Heritage Center & Headquarters
P.O. Box 426, 170 Mile Creek Road
Grand Portage, Minnesota 55605
218-475-0123 http://www.nps.gov/grpo/index.htm
The Spring 2016 History Graduate Research Seminar at New Mexico
State University work-shopped this chapter. Thanks to Victor Apodaca, Taj
Backus, Peter Mattox, Kyle Mery, Casey Panarese, Laura Salas, and Camille Ville
for making this a better history.
