History of Grand Forks County : with special reference to the first ten years of Grand Forks City, including an historical outline of the Red River Valley

• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: State Historical Society of North Dakota
• Subjects: Canada; Grand Forks; Hudson; Hudson Bay; Indian
• Online Access: http://cdm16921.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/38981

28 HISTORY OF GRAND FORKS COUNTY ancestry may have been, led to tbe diversion of a part of the fur trade of this region to the head of navigation on the Mississippi. This trade had an important influence on the founding and early growth ol St. Paul. Some say that it was tlie making of that city, but a large metropolis would have risen upon that site had there hgen no fur trade, since conditions pertaining to physical geography and oilier factors had already determined that question. Tlie American traders at tlie Red River posts suffered great losses from time to time from the aggressions of tlie Hudson Pay company's men. They also furnished the Indians, in tlie way of traffic, with large.quantities of whiskey, which the American traders were forbidden to do under severe penalties. In vain did Kittson protest and remonstrate and ask for protection and redress. General Sibley could not help him and tlie government would not. At last, in 1817, some Canadian traders came near Pembina and set up a post two miles from Rolette's, and sent out runners to the Indians that they wanted their furs for money and whiskey. Before they had fairly begun operations, Rolette took a dozen or so of his plucky retainers, halfbreeds for the most part, marched against the intruders, tumbled their goods out of their buildings, and burned them to the ground and drove the traders and their retainers back into Canada.* The streams of the Northwest were everywhere traversed by the voyageurs in the employment of the fur companies, and their banks were familiar to the trappers and hunters of those times. Probably most of the tributaries of Red river bear tlie names that these adventurous men applied to.them. The Hudson Bay company engaged men from Canada, Scotland and England as employees in the varied services- of the fur trading business, and many of them spent the remainder of their lives in the company's service. The Canadian French element predominated. All of them were men of vigorous, hardy constitutions, and their lives and labors were full ot hardship and often of excitement and peril. Out of every hundred, at least forty, it has been computed, perished through the perils that beset their dangerous mode of life. But tlie men liked the business and the places of those who lost their lives by untimely deaths were soon filled by others. In the absence of white womeii many of these men took Indian wives, and there grew up around the trading posts a numerous progeny of halfbreeds. At one period this element in the population ot North Dakota and Manitoba must have numbered about 3,000. The voyageurs, trappers and hunters led a gay, joyous, but, on the whole, rather hard and dangerous sort of life, remote from most of tlie conveniences, comforts and luxuries of civilization. * From a sketch written for the Minnesota Historical Society by Judge Flarulroau.—The Record Magazine, .lulv ISltn. Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.