Where were Minnesota’s fur trading posts located long ago?

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“There was a fur post near you!”

That’s what author and illustrator Carl Gawboy wrote next to a hand-drawn map of Minnesota in his book “Fur Trade Nation: An Ojibwe’s Graphic History.” Gawboy’s pen-and-ink drawing shows the state peppered with dots marking trading post sites.

​​Reader Carla Nelson has been wondering how those long-ago locations were chosen. Nelson, who left Minnesota for Georgia when she retired, remains curious about her home state’s history.

She asked Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader powered reporting project: “In the earlier years of Minnesota, how was it decided where to establish trading posts?”

The short answer: Waterways were key. So were the preferences of the tribal communities partnering in the French, British and American fur trade that flourished from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s.

“It’s all about location, location, location. The first thing you need to have a successful trading post is access to a waterway. Lakes and rivers are the highways of the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s,” said Bill Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The fur trade was a powerful industry in its time. It was a partnership between European Americans and Ojibwe and Dakota people, who already had long-established trade routes and trading customs, Convery said.

“The Ojibwe and Dakotas controlled the fur side of the fur trade, and so they really had a lot of say on how the trade was conducted, so much so that the Europeans really adopted a lot of Native American systems,” he said. “The systems of kinship and reciprocity and gift giving became major parts of the trade because that’s how the Ojibwes and Dakotas had traded with each other and among themselves for hundreds and even thousands of years.”

As the European market for beaver fur top hats boomed, trading became dominated by two British companies — Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company. The North West Company developed a new, competitive business model by going directly to where Native trappers lived and setting up as many forts as possible.

Gawboy’s graphic history contains drawings of several posts, including the “small city” of Grand Portage on the north shore of Lake Superior, where the North West Company collected furs before workers called voyageurs paddled them by canoe to Montreal.

“There was a fur post on almost every large lake and stream, of different national origins. Some operated only a season, some grew into modern towns,” Gawboy wrote.

In 1930, a Minnesota Historical Society historian named Grace Lee Nute went through trading companies’ business records as well as traders’ letters and journals. She tallied up every single mention she could find.

“She counted 132 posts, although we’re talking over a 200-some year period,” Convery said.

By the 1840s, beaver fur hats had fallen out of fashion — silk was the most popular material. The American Fur Company, which had its headquarters in Mendota, dissolved in 1847, according to a Minnesota Historical Society article.

More than a century later, archaeologists dug for fur-trade-era artifacts across the state. The National Park Service and Minnesota Historical Society rebuilt some of the posts that were part of the fur trade in Minnesota.

The Park Service opened Grand Portage National Monument on the shore of Lake Superior in 1960. Today, the historic site is administered by the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Park Service. It includes reconstructed buildings, including the Great Hall where the North West Company held its annual shareholder meeting, and a visitors center and museum.

Interpretive signs along the Snake River describe the site’s history, and a tall stockade surrounds the post itself, a single long log building with living quarters, a storage room and a trading room.

“All the principal Men [of the Snake River Ojibwe] came here to fix on a place for my Winter’s abode,” trader John Sayer, who established the post, wrote in his journal on Oct. 1, 1804.

Besides being on a river, the post needed to be on high ground so that it wouldn’t flood, according to the Historical Society. It also had to be in a place with abundant beaver and other furbearers and near a source of clay to build its three fireplaces.

The post operated for less than a year. By April 27, 1805, Sayer wrote in his journal, “Pack’d up all our Baggage & at 2PM embark’d.”

Sayer never returned, and the site eventually became a cornfield.

Decades later, a similar discovery is still possible, Convery said.

“I think there are still fur trading posts out there to be discovered. Our knowledge is only as good as the records that we’re aware of,” said Convery. “From time to time, new records come up, or new archaeological discoveries are found, which changes our understanding of the fur trade. The really exciting thing about history is that we never write the final word on this.”

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