Fur Trade

The fur trade drove the exploration, mapping, and early settlement of much of North America by Euro-Americans. Many fur trade-period objects and technologies remain at the Grand Portage site complex (site 21CK12), the Fort Charlotte site complex (site 21CK7), and the Grand Portage trail corridor (site 21CK6), bringing the diversity of fur trade life and routines into sharper focus.

Nearly every North West Company post from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to Fort George on the Pacific coast grew potatoes. The potatoes grown at Grand Portage were likely brought from Montreal, Michilimackinac, or possibly England as seed potatoes.

Learn about the ways people spent their winter at the time of the fur trade - work, survival, and even some leisure activities, during the harsh, dark, northern season.

Imagine that you are approaching the focal point of the fur trade during its pinnacle around 1797. If you came from Montreal, you traveled from Sault Ste. Marie in a 36’ canot du maître (master or Montreal Canoe), following a route along Lake Superior’s north shore. From the western interior pays d’en haut (up-country) of Canada, you paddled a 24’ canot du nord (North Canoe) down the Pigeon River to Fort Charlotte, then trod Gichi Onigaming (Great Carrying Place).

Commonly associated with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, bull boats were necessary to cross rivers in the West. Weighing as little as thirty pounds and made from the hide of bison, they replaced canoes west of Grand Portage as essential transportation for the fur trade in a landscape where birch was scarce.

Birch canoes were an integral part of the fur trade. The technology was born of the boreal forest and developed by the Anishinaabe and other Indigenous people to navigate the area's many rivers and lakes. This is the process used for hundreds of years.

Bere is a barley that grows well in colder climates near large masses of water, its rapid growth lends itself perfectly to the long hours of sunlight and short growing season of Grand Portage summers.

Learn about an early Great Lakes traveler first made famous by his interest hot air balloons. A wealthy Italian nobleman and one of the world’s first aeronauts, Count Paolo Andreani made the first balloon ascension in Italy in March 1784. In the 1790-91 period, Andreani turned to exploration and visited the Great Lakes region, coming to Grand Portage in a birchbark canoe.

Voyageurs, North Men and The Montrealers made up the bulk of the fur trade employees at Grand Portage. These hardy souls would spend weeks to months in the wilderness transporting trade goods to remote posts either in canoes or on their backs. Learn why some were called porkeaters and how others usually did not leave the fur trade having any money to take home.

Many vegetable varieties grown in the Grand Portage gardens date back to the 1700s and early 1800s. Vegetable varieties from 200 years ago and earlier are still available today because Native American and early settler families saved seeds from their harvests to plant in the following year. The seeds saved were handed down from one generation to another.