This is my latest brainstorm about the differences in interpreting the fur trade at Dakota sites versus the fur trade at Ojibwe sites. In other words, what’s the story, and how is it different, depending on where we are interpreting; for example, at the Faribault cabin at The Landing in Shakopee versus at the North West Company Fur Post in Pine City.

At the very least, the time period is different. The English fur trade with the Ojibwe and northern Dakota begins after the French and Indian War and ends in the northern United States with the end of war in 1815. By the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, the once dominant North West Company had been absorbed into the Hudson’s Bay Company and the geographic focus of the trade shifted north and westward. (In British North America, trade basically continues into the twentieth century.)

American controlled trading with the Dakota began with independent companies at the end of the 18th century. By the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, John Jacob Astor’s New York-based American Fur Company had a near-monopoly through the Upper Midwest. In 1833 Astor sold out to Pierre Chouteau in the west and to Ramsay Crooks in the Great Lakes region. Astor’s company name lingered and was used casually to refer to the subsequent companies during Minnesota Territorial period. The Ewing Brothers trading company of Indiana was present in Dakota areas during and after the Dakota Treaty of 1851. During this latter period, the traders purchased goods from Chouteau but were semi-independent in their dealings with bands.

Beyond when and where, the biggest thing to keep in mind about the Dakota trade is that the access routes for the goods were very different from the routes taken to Ojibwe country.

In the Dakota trade, transport and travel was along main rivers: the Mississippi was the most important and along with it the Minnesota, but also the Cannon, the Chippewa River of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin River, the lower St. Croix, the Upper Mississippi up to almost St. Cloud, the Crow River, and a few others. “Roads” instead of portages connected these places overland, with two important ones to keep in mind—the Traverse des Sioux and the overland route from Mendota to Faribault.

On the other hand, Ojibwe routes went through the Great Lakes and along a web of smaller waterways, connected by portages, into small native communities sprinkled throughout the north.

Until the mid-1830s when the Chouteau trading group of St. Louis took over Astor’s trading empire and began using steamboats to haul goods north from St. Louis, the goods came to the Mississippi-area Dakota living along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border by being hauled and paddled across the Fox River-Wisconsin River route from Lake Michigan. There was a series of trading stations from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien with Prairie du Chien being the westernmost warehouse. The Rolettes and the Brisbois and other old French families at Prairie du Chien were on one end and John Law and Vieu and some others were on the Green Bay end. There were also some traders along the Fox-Wisconsin route whose names elude me now. Hercules Dousman—the son of a Mackinaw trader—arrived at Prairie du Chien a bit later. He became the major player at Prairie du Chien and Wisconsin’s first millionaire—although I believe he did as much business in money lending as in the fur trade.

The Dakota gave up their hunting ground in today’s Wisconsin when they signed the 1837 treaty. The traders at Prairie du Chien then shifted focus farther up the Mississippi and to the Menominee, Winnebago, and other peoples along the Illinois border. Also in the early 1840s, Sibley at Mendota, using Kittson as his principal trader, extended his trade with the Ojibwe at Pembina and along the Red River. Goods for this farther reaching trade came up the Mississippi from St. Louis and while furs went down to St. Louis. It took the traders as much as three years to settle their books for any given trading season, which always made it tough to answer the question, “Is there any money to be made in this business?”

The next important thing to know is that the Indian Agency regulated the trading and issued the licenses for the Dakota trade.

In the Dakota country, the Superintendent was William Clark at St. Louis and the St. Peters Agency was run by Lawrence Taliaferro who got his job a year or two earlier than Schoolcraft. Taliaferro and Schoolcraft were not close friends. They squabbled about who had the Ojibwe of the far Upper Mississippi on his caseload. Taliaferro was more aggressive than Schoolcraft in asserting control over traders and therefore American Fur Company traders disliked him. He allowed a few traders to get Ojibwe licenses, such as Philander Prescott.

In the Ojibwe country, the Sault Ste Marie station was set up in early 1820s with Henry Schoolcraft as Agent and Lewis Cass, Michigan Territorial Governor as Superintendent, I think at Detroit. At first Schoolcraft had several tribes under his control, but especially the Ojibwe and Ottawa.

Once a treaty was signed, “Indian trading” replaced “fur trading” since dollars replaced fur as the money standard, although fur was also accepted.

Finally, it’s important to know the trade goods were roughly the same but there were a few differences.

While the basic items of Indian trade were determined during the French period, there was an Increasing reliance on guns and ammunition for hunting and warfare during the American period. There was also pressure for native peoples to abandon their seasonal rounds and take up settled farming. As a result, trade with the Dakota included more weapons and ammunition, as well as agricultural implements.

The Dakota of the Minnesota River area had first class trader service right to their doors. Dakota hunting parties went out to the prairies, but the families kept a relatively stable community living along the river with a trader close by. The Ojibwe ranged farther in the familial “seasonal round” and left their primary village sites empty for large periods of time. The Ojibwe did a lot of fishing and net-making material was a huge deal for them. They hunted large and small game but generally only the western Ojibwe went out on the far plains to hunt the buffalo. (I’m reading material regarding Cass Lake and Pillagers and their relationship to Red Lake and Pembina (who were plains hunters) and it’s clear that these groups considered the Red River country to be adjunct to their own closer hunting territories.)

The Dakota of the Minnesota River were formerly from the northern and eastern areas and they were still at least partially “woodland Dakota” with skills and tools for the same biomes as the Ojibwe of Minnesota, including some wild ricing and maple sugaring. They might have done more settled farming than the Ojibwe—women’s work—especially corn. In Sibley’s time, they hunted south into the Des Moines River area. Encounters with Sac and Fox were feared. Generally speaking, the Winnebago and Dakota were allies but sometimes they also clashed.

Western Dakota—the Yankton and Sisseton bands—were generally serviced by the Missouri River traders. Some buffalo hides came in through the Minnesota River traders. The ox cart trade was different, it came through Ojibwe country. The Upper Plains were a place of Dakota-Ojibwe interactions since they both hunted this rich territory. This was compounded by the political geography—there were mixed bloods in the Red River Colony who came over the border to kill buffalo on the plains, intruding into Dakota territory and also on their fellow Red Lake-Pembina bands.

Horses were generally not common to Minnesota Dakota culture, but they were in the Red River bands of Canada. In Sibley’s papers there is a sad section about the Dakota getting crazy to own horses, right after the signing of the 1851 treaty. Every nag available was rounded up and sold to the Dakota, who had little experience in horse husbandry. They abused the creatures and most often rode them to death.

This is just my current brainstorm. As usual, I welcome discussion and correction.

One more thing. This is the online PDF of the finding aid for the microfilmed Henry H. Sibley papers at the Minnesota Historical Society. Within it is a verbal overview of the Dakota trade, starting on page 7. The finding aid was written in 1968 and it reflects the biases of historians at that time. It might or might not mention resources that reflect today’s emphases, such as new approaches to Native History or a re-evaluation of the Dakota War or of Sibley and Ramsey as Minnesota heroes.

If any of you choose to follow up on the finding aid’s references to the microfilmed Sibley Papers, I’d love to know what you find . I’ve worked with some of them, but there are a heck of a lot of reels to crank through. I’d gladly share findings, or even join you at the crank in the MNHS microfilm room, in order to haves someone with whom to discuss the materials.

Linda Bryan