| Summary: | P R E - S E T T L E M E N T A N N A L S 27 more distant. During the day at least two thousand buffalo must have been killed for there were brought into camp 1,375 tongues. The hunters were followed by the carts which brought in the carcasses. Much of tlie meat was useless because of the heat of the season, but tbe tongues were cured, the skins saved and the pemmican prepared." TRADERS AND 'TRAPPERS. As time in its course neared the middle of tlie century, communication between the valley and the outside world became all the more frequent. Cart routes leading to the head of navigation on the Mississippi began to be established by tlie traders, who, independent of the American and tlie Hudson Bay fur companies, had begun to locate at Pembina, St. Joseph and a few other points in the Northwest. At first, the objective point of these cart trails was Mendota, near Fort Snelling, but St. Paul having gotten its first start about the year 1816, the cart trains with their great packs of buffalo robes and bales of mink and other skins thereafter went to that place. Here the steamboats took the peltries for shipment to St. Louis. In these enterprises the famous Joe Rolette first appears. Joe was a noted trader of those times. He was born at Prairie du Chien, October 23, 1820, his father, who was a native of Quebec, having been an Indian trader of note in the early days of Wisconsin. In early life Joe was sent to New York to be educated under the supervision of Ramsey Crooks, president of the American Fur company. On his return to the west, he entered the service of bis father in tlie fur trade. General Sibley ,was then residing in a stone built house at Mendota, which was his headr quarters, and he had charge of tlie company's fur trading business in the Northwest. The elder Rolette died in 1842, and about that time the general sent Joe to Pembina in connection with the company's interests there, and became in company with his mother's brother, a Mr. Fisher, who had spent the most of his life trading with tlie Indians. Thenceforth Joe made Pembina his future home. In 1843 Norman W. Kittson, who was a relative of Captain Henry, and in modern times a wealthy railroad official of St. Paul, also came to Pembina and began laying the foundation of his subsequent large fortune. In connection with llolette, he established a trading post at Pembina, and removed in 1852 to St. Joseph, being associated there for awhile with a trader named Forbes, and a littie later with Charles Cavileer. Only six carls went from Pembina to the Mississippi in 1844, but'with tlie passing years this small number increased to some hundreds as the trade developed. The establishment in the Red River Valley of distinctively American traders, whatever their Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
|
|---|