Traders

A Fur Trader in the Council Tipi, about 1892American Indian nations traded for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Over a 200-year span beginning in the mid-1600s, European traders exchanged manufactured goods for valuable furs with Indian people. Following the American Revolution, the United States competed fiercely with Great Britain for dominance of the North American fur trade. After the War of 1812 there were three main parties involved in the Northwest Territory's fur trade: Indians, fur trading companies, and the U.S. government. 

Dakota and Ojibwe men were the primary trappers of fur-bearing animals (beaver being the most valuable) in the woodlands and waterways of the Northwest Territory.  In exchange for these furs, French, British, and U.S. traders provided goods such as blankets, firearms and ammunition, cloth, metal tools, and brass kettles. For thousands of years, Dakota and Ojibwe people had used tools made from readily available materials. By the 1800s, however, trade goods were a part of daily life for many American Indian communities. Mixed blood (Indian and French) fur trader, about 1870
 
By the 1830s the fur trade had declined dramatically due to changes in fashion, the availability of less expensive materials for hat-making, and because available game in Dakota and Ojibwe hunting grounds had been reduced by competition with European immigrants. Many fur traders took the opportunity to become land speculators, and economics in the region changed forever. Since many Dakota and Ojibwe people had become increasingly dependent on the trade, it became a matter of survival to enter into exchanges of land for money, goods, and services; to maintain their welfare; and to pay off debts claimed by traders. 
 
 
 

Theme:

Share Your Story

Topics:

Fur Trade
Cite
Admin. "Traders." https://www3.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/history/newcomers/traders
Print This Page
copy-right-img

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Copyright and Use Information.

Bibliography

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Brown, Jennifer S. H. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980.

Gilman, Carolyn. Where Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur Trade. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1982.

Green, William D. A Peculiar Imbalance: The Rise and Fall of Racial Equality in Early Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.

Nelson, George. My First Years in the Fur Trade: The Journals of 1802-1804. Edited by Laura Peers and Theresa Schenck. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.

Nute, Grace Lee. The Voyageur. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1955.

Resources for Further Research

Websites

Seeking a Fortune: The Fur Trader. Tales of the Territory. Minnesota Historical Society.
 

Primary

Nelson, George. My First Years in the Fur Trade: The Journals of 1802-1804. Edited by Laura Peers and Theresa Schenck. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.
 

The Fur Trade Collection. Minnesota Historical Society.

Secondary
People of the Fur Trade: On the backs of men, in the hands of women. Northwest Company Fur Post. Minnesota Historical Society.

 

Historic Sites
North West Company Fur Post

Glossary Terms

Trader

Voyageur

Key People

Joseph Brown (1)
Joseph R. Brown
Renville t (2)
Joseph Renville
Prescott_0
Philander Prescott
Myrick
Andrew Myrick
henery-sibley
Henry H. Sibley
Joseph Brown (1)

Joseph R. Brown

Joseph Renshaw Brown was born in York County, Pennsylvania, on January 5, 1805.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1820, he was assigned to the Fifth Infantry Regiment, which had been sent to the upper Mississippi River area in order to build a military post at the river's confluence with what is now known as the Minnesota River.  The post--Fort St. Anthony--was later renamed Fort Snelling.  After leaving the army in 1828, Brown remained in the area, and in the ensuing years he was at various times a fur trader farmer; lumberman; stagecoach line owner; justice of the peace, clerk of court, and register of deeds; printer; newspaper editor, owner, and publisher; and U.S. Indian agent in Minnesota (1857-61). 
 
Actively involved in politics, he served in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, as a delegate to the conventions that organized Minnesota Territory and drafted the state's constitution, and in the Minnesota Territorial Council and Legislature. He was also an avid promoter of a steam-powered traction engine which he purchased from a New York engineer.  Brown was associated with the development of several Minnesota communities, including the town of Henderson.
In 1850, the twice-divorced Brown married Susan Frenier, whose forebears included a French fur trader, a Mdewakanton Dakota chief, and a Yankton Dakota chief.
 
During the U.S.-Dakota War, while he was away from Minnesota on business related to the steam wagon, Brown's house near what is now the town of Sacred Heart was burned and his family captured. They were later released. Following his return to Minnesota he served as superintendent of the Indian prison at Mankato, participated in the military campaigns against the Dakota, and was special military agent at Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory.  He died in New York City in 1870, while on a business trip in connection with the steam wagon. 
 

For more information, see: Nancy Goodman and Robert Goodman, Joseph R. Brown: Adventurer on the Minnesota Frontier, 1820-1849, Rochester, MN: Lone Oak Press, 1996

 

View full article: Joseph R. Brown

 

Renville t (2)

Joseph Renville

The son of a French trader and a Dakota woman, Joseph Renville was born near present-day St. Paul and lived with his Dakota relatives until he was ten, when he moved with his father to Canada. He eventually returned to Minnesota, where he was an interpreter for Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in 1805 and 1806 and for Major Stephen Long in 1823. Renville established a fur-trading post in 1826 near Lac qui Parle as an agent for the American Fur Company. His familiarity with European and Indian culture, as well as his fluency in the Dakota, English, and French languages, made him an effective trader and a trusted intermediary among the people who lived and worked near his post.
Raised as a Catholic, Renville invited European missionaries to establish a mission and school near his fur post. Through the Lac qui Parle mission, Renville worked to further strengthen relationships among the European and Dakota peoples. With missionaries Thomas S. Williamson, Stephen R. Riggs, and Samuel and Gideon Pond, he translated the Bible and various hymnals into the Dakota language. The process was slow: a Bible verse would be read in French, Renville would translate it into the Dakota language, and his words would be carefully written down. Dakota is an oral language, and Renville's translations were among the first attempts to record Dakota in written form.
 

View full article: Joseph Renville

 

Prescott_0

Philander Prescott

Philander Prescott was born September 17, 1801 in Phelpstown, New York. In 1820 he arrived at Camp New Hope (Fort Snelling) in Minnesota. He married the daughter of a Dakota chief in 1823. Prescott and his wife, Mary, and their children lived among the Dakota for more than 40 years. He was engaged in the fur trade with the American and Columbia fur trading companies and was associated with Lawrence Taliaferro's Eatonville agricultural colony for the Indians. He was an interpreter during the Traverse des Sioux treaty negotiations in 1851.
Prescott talked about treaty funds being misused in a report made to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1856:
"Estimates and requisitions have annually been made from the Sioux agency office for all the funds due the Sioux by treaty stipulations.
 
To the honor of the president and congress these funds to the full extent have been annually appropriated. And when it was represented a few years ago that an earlier payment of the annuities would be desirable these appropriations have been since made one year in advance. Have the officers under the president applied these funds, so appropriated in the manner stipulated by the treaties? I can distinctly say no!
 
The treaties say these funds shall be annually expended, whereas large amounts have been kept back and are now in arrear and that after repeated applications to have them expended. These arrears are not mere petty sums, surpluses or remnants of funds remaining unexpended but large amounts thousands and tens of thousands-and in some cases the whole fund appropriated for a special purpose.'"
 
On the morning of August 18, 1862, Dakota friends warned Prescott to stay out of sight in his house. His family stayed there, but Prescott chose to flee to Fort Ridgely. Dakota soldiers killed him and took Mary, his wife, and their children captive. Mary and her daughter Julia escaped captivity during the Battle of Wood Lake and went to Fort Ridgely.
 

View full article: Philander Prescott

 

Myrick

Andrew Myrick

"So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung."
Andrew Myrick to Agent Galbraith, 1862.
Andrew Myrick was born in 1832. He was a trader at the Lower Sioux Agency at the time of the U.S.-Dakota War and is often considered in part responsible for the start of the war. When Dakota leaders asked the traders to extend them more credit for goods when annuity payments were late, the traders refused. Myrick wrote a letter to his brothers about the incident:
"A.J. Myrick to Dear Brothers July 26, 1862, OIA Special File 271.
[Lower] Sioux Agency July 26th [18]62
Dear Brothers —
The Lower Indians have been playing the devil in general. They had two secret councils at which they resolved not to pay a dollar of their credits, established a soldiers lodge of one hundred warriors to execute the plan.... we all determined not [to] give any more credit hoping to starve them into a change of sentiment....
[Yesterday] they formed a line of battle marched to all the stores and made the following… speech “You have said you have closed your stores for 2 Sundays and that we should have to eat grass. We warn you not to cut another stick of wood or to cut our grass,” feeling themselves probably much relieved departed ... In their secret council there [were] some intimations that the present traders were to be driven off and someone new to have exclusive control of the trade. Now whether the agent had anything to do with it we can’t find out but it looks very much as if that was the programme.
I am at a loss and so doing have given out no credits since last Sunday and at present deem it best not to give away any more for a week or ten days hoping it will produce a reaction. They will get very hungry and possibly if the officials are not engaged in it they may change their sentiments and favor paying their credits ...
I wish you could come up and suggest to Forbes to come and help straighten out the snarl the Indians have got us in. I have not talked with them yet seeming it best to let them get hungry first hoping they might retract and become decent again."
On August 18, at the start of the U.S.-Dakota War, Myrick was killed while trying to run away from the Lower Agency, one of the first whites to die. Stories say he was found with grass stuffed in his mouth.

View full article: Andrew Myrick

 

henery-sibley

Henry H. Sibley

In 1834, Henry Sibley became a partner in the American Fur Company and settled in Mendota, Minnesota. Like a number of other traders, Sibley entered into a relationship with a Dakota woman, Red Blanket Woman. Their relationship produced a daughter, Helen Sibley, before the couple parted to live separate lives. Sibley acknowledged his daughter, protected her interests and education, and remained involved in her life. After the fur trade dwindled, Henry Sibley became a successful businessman, investing in lumbering, river transportation, railroads, and land. He played a pivotal role in the 1851 treaty negotiations and later commanded U.S. troops during the war and on the 1863 punitive expeditions.  From 1867-70, he served as president of the Minnesota Historical Society.

 
During the war, Sibley was vilified in the press for his slowness in advancing to Fort Ridgely to liberate captive settlers. He wrote to his wife on September 4, 1862:
 
"I see . . . that the people are dissatisfied with my slow advance. Well, let them come and fight these Indians themselves, and they will [have] something to do besides grumbling. I have told Gov. R. in my dispatch that he can have my commission when he sees fit, as I would be too glad to let some one take my place. . . . I have not slept more than an hour in two nights, and have been in the saddle almost [all] of the time for two days and nights. . . ."
 
Colonel Sibley to Governor Ramsey, August 25, 1862: 
 
"My heart is steeled against them, and if i have the means, and can catch them, I will sweep them with the besom of death." 
 
Sibley convened the military commission that condemned 303 Dakota men to death in the wake of the war.

 

Letter From Col. Henry Sibley to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, December 19th, 1862.
 
"[I]t should be borne in mind that the Military Commission appointed by me were instructed only to satisfy themselves of the voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by his voluntary concession or by other evidence and then to proceed no further.  The degree of guilt was not one of the objects to be attained, and indeed it would have been impossible to devote as much time in eliciting details in each of so many hundred cases, as would have been required while the expedition was in the field.  Every man who was condemned was sufficiently proven to be a voluntary participant, and no doubt exists in my mind that at least seven-eighths of those sentenced to be hung have been guilty of the most flagrant outrages and many of them concerned in the violation of white women and the murder of children." 
 
Source: Executive documents, MNHS collections and Henry H. Sibley: An Inventory of His Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society and Governors of Minnesota.

 

View full article: Henry H. Sibley

 

Related Images

Traders dinner
Fur Traders at Dinner on the Prairie
Fur Trade House
Fur Trade House
Copper Kettle
Trade Kettle
Traders
Voyageur Canoe
Trade Beads
Trade Beads
Trade Ax
Trade Ax
NW Flintlock
Flintlock Musket
C5SS1a_0
The Trading Store
Traders dinner

Fur Traders at Dinner on the Prairie

Edward Augustus Bromely took this picture of fur traders on the prairie in about 1910.
Oxcarts like the one in the photograph were used to transport the traders' goods. 

Fur Trade House

Fur Trade House

A fur trade house at Mendota, Minnesota, in about 1860.

Copper Kettle

Trade Kettle

This copper kettle was found at the Minnesota and Ontario border. This type of kettle was desirable for trade because it was easy to transport, fireproof, and durable. 

Traders

Voyageur Canoe

Voyageur canoes, called 'montreal canoes' were the water transportation of the fur trade. Men called "voyageurs" paddled the canoes and hauled the heavy loads.  
 

Trade Beads

Trade Beads

These French-made beads date from the 1600s, and were appealing trade items. 

Trade Ax

Trade Ax

Iron axheads were popular trade items. This ax dates between 1850 and 1900.

NW Flintlock

Flintlock Musket

This is a flintlock musket like the ones used in the Northwest fur trade in about 1800. This musket was made by gunsmith Robert Wheeler in Birmingham, England.

C5SS1a_0

The Trading Store

A view inside a trading store in 1876.

Related Documents

search-icon
trading license
More Info
search-icon
Trading Licenses
More Info
search-icon
Settler Arrival_0
More Info
trading license

Trading License

License granted to Henry H. Sibley by Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro on September 30, 1835. The license grants trading rights "for one year at the entry of the River St. Peters near Fort Snelling."

Trading Licenses

Trading License

This document lists eight people granted licenses to trade with Dakota and Ojibwe at the St. Peters Indian Agency in 1822. It lists the amount of credit granted to each trader and offers information about three individuals employed by the Columbia Fur Company.

Settler Arrival_0

Provencalle's Account

This is a page from the ledger book of trader Louis Provencalle. Provencalle was an employee of the American Fur Company of New York and its successors, which set up trading stations throughout the region.
Beginning in 1834, Henry Hastings Sibley managed the headquarters post at Mendota. Traders received their goods on credit from the post manager, paying an amount above the basic cost. In the Fall, the traders moved their goods to locations where they outfitted Indian hunters on credit. After the winter trapping season, the Indians brought their furs to the trader to clear their accounts.
The traders returned to headquarters with the furs. There, they received the difference between the value of the pelts and the amount of merchandise they had received on credit--plus the wages of employees who had worked at their posts.