| Summary: | Early Settlement French-Canadian voyageurs were the first white men to reach this area in the middle of the North American continent. More than two centuries ago they came in search of furs and to trade with the Indians of the Red River Valley — the Sioux and the Chippewa. There was no voyageur post very near the present site of Moorhead-Fargo: the nearest were Frenchman's Bluff (Syre), Brainerd, Red Lake Falls, and Pembina (Georgetown belonged to a later era and had a different function). But the long voyageur canoes — bringing in trade goods and taking out furs — moved up and down the Red River by 1720. They had explored Lake Superior by 1675, three hundred years ago. In the next fifty years they pushed into the Valley by two routes: along the border waters from Grand Portage, up the Pigeon River, through Rainy Lake, the Rainy River, and Lake of the Woods to the Red River; also down from Hudson Bay, through Lake Winnipeg and up the Red River to Moorhead and beyond. Their canoes ventured up the tributaries of the Red — the Buffalo, Wild Rice, Sheyenne and many others; the furs went back to Grand Portage, Michilimackinac, and Montreal, or to Fort Garry, Hudson Bay, and on to London. The heyday of the Montreal fur trade, the heroic age of the voyageurs, was the fifty years from 1770 to 1820. The great trapping and trading region was the border country, and the rivers and lakes just north of the U.S.Canadian boundary; but the French- Canadians who went westward from the St. Lawrence also worked the Red River and its tributaries. In 1821, however, their North West Company was swallowed by the rival Hudson's Bay Company. The Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company had been formed in 1670 by Prince Rupert of England and seventeen members of the English nobility. Two Frenchmen were really responsible for the chartering of this "company of adventurers of England, trading into Hudson Bay." Pierre Raddisson and his brother-in-law had been successful traders in New France, but the French governor confiscated their profits for his own use; so they went to England, where they interested King Charles II and Prince Rupert in English fur trade in the New World. The king granted to these "gentlemen adventurers" the right to all the land drained by Hudson Bay. This included the Red River basin. The land thus outlined was called "Rupert's Land" and was ruled locally by a Governor-in-Chief, in later years in residence at Fort Garry (Winnipeg)- The main purpose of the Hudson's Bay Company was to further trade with the Indians, who were treated generously and with fairness. Beaver were abundant in the Red River Valley. The most southern and last- constructed fur trading post was built in 1859 at Georgetown (present location of the Clay County Park). Georgetown, which was named for Sir George Simpson, Governor-in- Chief of Rupert's Land, already existed as a trading post: it was noted on an 1858 Minnesota State map. James McKay was the first agent at the post from 1859 to 1860; he was followed by Chief Trader Alexander Hunter Murray — founder of Fort Yukon, Alaska (1860-62), Norman W. Kittson (1862-63), R. M. Probstfield (1863-64), and W. J. S. Traill (1870- 75). The post was closed in 1875 because of the decline in available pelts. The reconstructed warehouse at Georgetown is unique in that it is the only one in the nation with original timbers. It was a two-story structure measuring 28 by 50 feet. In peak season more than a millon dollars worth of furs were stored. When the furs arrived they were salted and stored until picked up by a barge or cart and taken to Fort Garry, and then shipped to London from Hudson Bay. The voyageurs were travellers (which is what the French word means), not settlers; and the Hudson's Bay Company, like the North West, was interested in furs, not colonization. However, in 1811 the Earl of Selkirk obtained a huge tract from the Hudson's Bay Company for a colonization scheme; this led to the first settlement in the Red River Valley, at Pembina, and indirectly to the settlement of Moorhead. Selkirk planned an agricultural settlement of evicted Scottish crofters, who would raise food for the Hudson's Bay people, the voyageurs and others. From 1811 Perkins Pancake House The Pierce Co. 129 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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