RED RIVER TRAILS

The 'Red River Trails' were a network of ox cart trails connecting the Red River Colony (Selkirk Settlement) in what is now the Canadian province of Manitoba, with the head of navigation of the Mississippi River at Saint Paul in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The trails went from modern Winnipeg, Manitoba to the international border and then crossed the eastern part of Dakota Territory and much of western and central Minnesota to St. Paul. For half a century between the 1820s and the early 1870s they provided the principal means of transportation between the Red River Colony and the outside world, and also gave the Métis people an outlet for their furs and source for supplies other than the Hudson's Bay Company. The trails broke the monopoly of that company, accelerated settlement of Canada west of the rugged barrier of the Canadian Shield, and contributed to the settlement of Minnesota and North Dakota in the United States.

Contents

Background

Development

West Plains Trail

Woods Trail

East Plains Trail

Life on the trail

The end of the trails

Significance

References

Notes

Sources

Websites

External links

Background

In 1812, Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, started a colony of settlers in British North America where the Assiniboine River joined the Red River of the North at the site of modern Winnipeg.^[1] While fur posts were scattered throughout the Canadian northwest and settlements of Métis fur traders and bison hunters were located in the vicinity of Selkirk’s establishment,^[2] his colony was the only agricultural settlement between Upper Canada and the Pacific Ocean. Isolated by geology behind the rugged Canadian Shield and many hundreds of miles of wilderness, the only access of the settlers and their Métis neighbors to outside markets and sources of supply was by two laborious water routes.
The first, maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company (of which Lord Selkirk was a principal), was a sea route from Great Britain to York Factory on Hudson Bay, then up a chain of rivers and lakes to the colony, 780 miles (1250 km) from salt water to the Assiniboine.^[3] The alternative was the historic route of rival North West Company's voyageurs from Montreal through Lakes Huron and Superior, along the international border through Lake of the Woods, and then down the Winnipeg River to the Red. The distance from the Selkirk settlement to Lake Superior at Grand Portage was about 400 miles (640 km) and even further to the new post at Fort William, but Lake Superior was only the start of a lengthy journey to Montreal where furs and supplies would be transhipped to and from Europe.^[4] Neither of these routes were suitable for heavy freight; the only cargo transported was that which could be carried in York boats to Hudson's Bay or canoes on the border route, both of which required passage of large and hazardous lakes and shallow and rapid-strewn waterways, and on which cargo and watercraft had to be carried on men's backs over dozens of portages.
But geology also provided an alternate route, albeit across foreign territory. The valleys of the Red and Minnesota Rivers lay in the beds of Glacial Lake Agassiz and its prehistoric outlet the glacial River Warren; the lands exposed when these bodies of water receded were flat plains between low uplands covered by prairie grasslands. At the Traverse Gap, only a mile (1.6  km) of land separated the Bois des Sioux River, a source stream of the Red (which flowed north to Hudson's Bay) and the Little Minnesota River, a source stream of the Minnesota River (tributary to the Mississippi, which flowed south to the Gulf of Mexico). The valley floors and uplands of the watercourses along this gently graded route provided a natural thoroughfare to the south, and the eyes of the colonists therefore turned to the new United States, both as a source of supplies and an (illegal) outlet for their furs.^[5]

Development

The rich fur areas along the upper Mississippi, Minnesota, Des Moines, and Missouri Rivers were exploited by independent fur traders operating from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. They established fur posts in the Minnesota River valley at Lake Traverse, Big Stone Lake, Lac qui Parle, and Traverse des Sioux. The large fur companies also built posts, including the North West Company's stations at Pembina and St. Joseph in the valley of the Red River. The routes between these posts became parts of the Red River Trails.
In 1815, 1822, and 1823 cattle were herded to the colony from Missouri by a route up the Des Moines River Valley to the Minnesota River then down the Red River to the Selkirk settlement.^[6] In 1819, following a devastating plague of locusts which left the colonists with insufficient seed even to plant a crop, an expedition was sent by snowshoe to purchase seed at Prairie du Chien. It returned by flatboat up the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers and down the Red River Valley, arriving back at the settlement in the summer of 1820.^[7] In 1821 five dissatisfied settler families left the colony for Fort Snelling, these families were precursors to later tides of migration up and down the valley between the two nations. Two years later in 1821 Major Stephen B. Long was the first official U.S. representative to reach Pembina; his expedition came by way of the Minnesota and Red Rivers.^[8] These early uses of the valleys of the two streams followed what became the first of the Red River Trails.

West Plains Trail

The 'West Plains Trail' went up (south) the Red River on its west bank to Pembina, North Dakota, a fur-trading post in use since the last decades of the eighteenth century.^[9] It went across the uplands west of the Red River, and therefore avoided the swampy bottomlands and the tributary stream crossings in the lakebed of Glacial Lake Agassiz.^[10]
In what is now southeastern North Dakota the trail veered to the south-southeast to close with the Red River in the vicinity of Fort Abercrombie and Breckenridge, Minnesota, neither of which existed at first, and both of which were created as a consequence of the passing cart traffic.^[11] From Breckenridge the trail continued up the east bank of the Red and Bois des Sioux Rivers to the continental divide at Lake Traverse. Some traffic proceeded up the lake, through the Traverse Gap on the continental divide then down either the west or east side of Big Stone Lake, while other carters took a short cut directly south from the Bois des Sioux across the open prairie through modern Wheaton and Graceville, Minnesota thereby avoiding the wet country in the Traverse Gap. ^[12]
From there the 'Minnesota Trail' (also known as the 'Minnesota Valley Trail') proceeded by intertwined routes down both sides of the valley of the Minnesota River past Lac qui Parle to Fort Ridgely, passing a number of fur posts on the way. From Fort Ridgely the trail struck across the open prairie to the Minnesota River at Traverse des Sioux near modern-day St. Peter, Minnesota, where the furs and goods were usually transshipped to flatboats.^[13] Cart trains which continued on crossed to the east bank and proceeded northeast on the wooded river bottoms and hillsides to Fort Snelling or Mendota, where the Minnesota River joined the Mississippi. ^[14]
The Minnesota trail originated with Native Americans, and before the oxcart traffic it connected the fur-trading posts of the Columbia Fur Company.^[15] In fact, that company introduced the use of the Red River ox cart to haul its furs and goods. It also developed the trails, and by the early 1830s an expedition from the Selkirk settlement driving a flock of sheep from Kentucky to the Assiniboine found the Minnesota Trail to be well-marked.^[16]
Sporadic at first, regular trade between Fort Garry and the Mississippi started in 1835 when a caravan of traders from the Red River came to Mendota. The efforts of the Hudson’s Bay Company to enforce its monopoly only moved the fur traders across the border, including Norman Kittson who started with one six-cart train in 1844.^[17] In later year trains consisting of hundreds of ox carts were sent from Kittson’s post at Pembina, just inside U.S. territory and safely outside the reach of the Hudson’s Bay Company.^[18]

Woods Trail

The West Plains Trail, although relatively level, went by a lengthy route through the lands of the Dakota people, and the shorter East Plains trail also skirted Dakota land. The Dakota were the enemy of the Ojibwa, to whom the Metis carters were related by blood and marriage.^[19] These tensions led to conflicts. One such bloody confrontation in the summer of 1844 (caused by an attack by Métis carters on Dakota hunters) found that year's expedition in St. Paul, from which it could not safely return by its normal route.^[20] The cart train therefore struck northwest up the Mississippi to Crow Wing at the mouth of the Crow Wing River, west up that river and across the divide to the fur post at Otter Tail Lake, then north along the uplands between the watersheds of the Red and Mississippi rivers and across the prairie to Fort Garry.^[21] This trail was known as the 'Woods' or 'Crow Wing Trail'; it was also known locally as the 'Saint Paul Trail' and even as the 'Pembina Trail.'^[22]
As the first of these names indicates, the path was wooded over part of its way, as its southern reaches crossed the transition zone between the western prairies and eastern woodland. From Fort Garry, southbound cart trains followed the east bank of the Red River, crossing the Roseau River and the international border. In Minnesota the trail was joined by a route from Pembina to the northwest, and continued south on a level prairie in the former lakebed of prehistoric Lake Agassiz. It ascended to and followed a firm gravelly ridge which was once one of the higher beaches or strandlines of that lake. The route left the plains and turned east into a forest in the Leaf Mountains on the continental divide. Taking a difficult but scenic path east through the woods, the trail crossed the Mississippi River at Crow Wing. It went down the east bank of that river on a smooth and open glacial outwash sandplain to Sauk Rapids and East Saint Cloud.^[23]

The final lap of the Middle Trail to Saint Paul, which had replaced Mendota as the principal entrepôt for the cart trade, continued along the sandplain on the east bank of the Mississippi River. This route ran within a few miles of the river to Saint Anthony, where it left the river and crossed then-open county to St. Paul. The carters would camp on the uplands west of the steamboat landing during the interval between their arrival with the furs and their return to the north with supplies and trade goods.^[24]
Inferior in terrain to other routes, the Woods Trail was superior in safety, as it was well within the lands of the Ojibwa. It was less well used during times of relative calm.^[25] In the late 1850s its utility was increased by improvements made by the U.S. Army.^[26]

East Plains Trail

The 'Middle' or 'East Plains Trail' also came into common use in the 1840s. Shorter than the competing West Plain Trail, it became the route of the large cart trains originating from Pembina when well-known trader Henry Sibley retired from the fur trade in 1854. His former partner and successor Norman Kittson moved their company's cart trains from the Minnesota Valley to the East Plains route.^[27]
The Middle Trail followed the older routes from Pembina to Breckenridge, Minnesota, then struck east by a variety of routes out of the Red River Valley, across the upper valleys of the Pomme de Terre and Chippewa Rivers (tributaries of the Minnesota River), to St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids on the Upper Mississippi. There the furs were transshipped to river craft on the Mississippi, or were taken by the cart trains accross the Mississippi and went on to Saint Paul on the Woods Trail.^[28]
Over most of its route the Middle Trail route went through a post-glacial landscape of lakes, moraines, and drumlins, with beautiful scenery and difficult swamps. As the area became settled during Minnesota’s territorial and early statehood days, the routes were improved, stagecoach service was instituted, towns were established, and settlement began.^[29]

Life on the trail

The typical carter was a Métis descended from French voyageurs and Ojibway. His conveyance was the Red River ox cart, a simple conveyance derived either from the two-wheeled ''charettes'' used in French Canada, or from Scottish carts, ^[30] but adapted from 1801 on to use only local materials.^[31] It contained no iron at all, being entirely constructed of wood and animal hide. Two twelve-foot long parallel oak shafts or "trams" bracketed the draft animal in front and formed the frame of the cart to the rear. Cross-pieces held the floorboards, and front, side and rear boards or rails enclosed the box. These wooden pieces were joined by mortices and tenons. Also of seasoned oak was the axle, lashed to the cart by strips of bison hide or "shaganappi" attached when wet which shrunk and tightened as they dried. The axles connected two spoked wheels, five or six feet in diameter, which were "dished" or in the form of a shallow cone, the apex of which was at the hub.^[32] Motive power for the carts was originally supplied by small horses obtained from the First Nations. After cattle were brought to the colony in the 1820s oxen were used, preferred because of their strength, endurance, and cloven hooves which spread their weight in swampy areas.^[31]
The cart, constructed of native materials, could easily be repaired. A supply of shaganapi and wood was brought; a cart could break a half-dozen axles in a one-way trip.^[31]
The axles were ungreased, as grease would capture dust which would act as sandpaper and immobilize the cart.^[35] The resultant squeal sounded like an untuned violin, giving it the sobriquet of "the North West fiddle"; one visitor wrote that "a den of wild beasts cannot be compared with its hideousness."^[36] The noise was audible for miles. The carts were completely unsprung, and only their flexible construction damped the shocks transmitted from the humps and hollows of the trail.

The end of the trails

Some ox cart trains at times did not go all the way through, but were supplemented by river craft. First flatboats and later shallow-draft steamboats ascended the Minnesota River to Traverse des Sioux and upstream points, where they were met by cart brigades traveling the Minnesota Valley Trail. In 1851 weekly steamboat service on the Mississippi began between Saint Anthony Falls and Sauk Rapids on the Middle and Woods trails. In 1859 steamboat machinery was carried to the Red River and a boat was built to accommodate it, but service was intermittent and the Dakota War of 1862 and the U.S. Civil War inhibited further improvements until after the wars.^[37]
After the Civil War the age of steam came to the region. Steamboat service was revived on the Red River, and railways were built west from Saint Paul and Duluth on Lake Superior. A branch of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad reached St. Cloud in 1866, and the mainline of that concern reached Willmar in 1869 and Benson the following year. Each end-of-track town in turn became the terminus for many of the cart trains. In 1871 the railway reached the Red River at Breckenridge, where revived steamboat service carried the traffic the rest of way to Winnipeg.^[38] The ox cart trains were replaced by trains drawn by steam, and the trails reverted to nature.^[39]

Significance

The Red River Trails sustained the Selkirk settlement in its early years and gave its colonists and their Métis neighbors a route for immigration and emigration as well as a highway for trade which was not dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company. As usage grew, old fur trading posts became settlements and new communities were established along the routes. The routes pioneered by the fur brigades led to the development of Minnesota and North Dakota, and facilitated settlement of the Canadian northwest.
The trails had profound political effects as well. The trails and the colony which they served were established in a time of Anglo-American tension and concern over the cross-border influence of each nation over the territory and citizens of the other. The trails and their uses both were created by, and contributed, to these influences. Born of the impetus of commerce and located by the dictates of geography, the trails had political effects unthought of by many of their users. The continued British presence in the northwestern fur posts on soil which the Unites States claimed, prior British claims to the Red River Valley and attempts to obtain access to the Mississippi, and the establishment of Lord Selkirk's colony all contributed to U.S. interest in the area and military expeditions to assert that interest.^[40] But British influence south of the border continued for a long time.
Later on, the economic dependence of the Selkirk settlements and the Canadian Northwest on the Red River trade routes to U.S. markets came to pose a threat to British and Canadian control.^[41] The geographical dictates which led to the trails' establishment continued even beyond the end of the trails. At a time when a sense of Canadian nationality was tenuous in the Northwest, that region relied on the Red River Trails and its successor steamboat and rail lines as an outlet for its products and a source of supplies.^[42] And there was an active Manifest Destiny faction in Minnesota which sought to use those commercial ties as a means to acquire northwestern Canada for the United States.^[43] These pressures led Canada to obtain cession by the Hudson's Bay Company of its territory and rights, contributed to Canadian Confederation and the establishment of Manitoba, and led to the decision to require on an all-Canada route for the Canadian Pacific Railway.^[44] Not until completion of that line in 1885 did Manitoba and the Northwest finally have reliable and efficient access to eastern Canada by a route located entirely on Canadian soil.^[45]
Now, with the border firmly established and peaceful, a greater sense of Canadian nationality and diminution of fears of U.S. Manifest Destiny, and expanded north-south commerce in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the trade corridor once occupied by these long-gone trails continues to be employed for its historic uses.^[46]

References

Notes

1. This settlement had a number of names over the years, including the ''Selkirk Colony'' or ''Selkirk Settlement'' and later ''Fort Garry''. The latter name was current during most of the period covered by this article.
2. Bryce, ''The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists'', pp. 27-29.
3. Bryce, ''The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists'', states this figure at page 78. Eric Morse however gives the distance from York Factory to Winnipeg via Norway House as a total of 650 miles (1040 km). Morse, ''Fur Trade Routes in Canada'', p. 20.
4. Bryce, ''The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists'', p. 96.
5. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 7-8. Although founded as an agricultural colony, its Métis neighbors were fur traders, and many of the colonists also turned to that lucrative endeavor. The sole legal outlet for their fur, and for that matter the sole legal source of supply, was the Hudson Bay Company, the charter of which gave it a monopoly on trade. Kelsey, ''Red River Runs North!'', pp. 136-139.
6. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 2, 4.
7. Bryce, ''The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists'', pp. 156-58; Kelsey, ''Red River Runs North!'', pp. 102-03.
8. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 6.
9. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 27-33. From there some traffic continued south along the river, but most cart trains went west to St. Joseph near the border, then south, or else cut the corner to the southwest in order to intercept the trail south from St. Joseph. This north-south trail, known as the 'North Dakota' or 'Ridge Trail', paralleled the Red River thirty miles (50 km) to the west.Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 34-38.
10. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-3; Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 38.
11. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 41.
12. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 44-47.
13. Kittson preferred to transship here, and keep his carters away from the diversions and temptations of the tiny settlement which was to grow into Saint Paul.14. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 43-47.
15. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 5, 43.
16. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 5, 7.
17. Kelsey, ''Red River Runs North!'', pp. 126, 139.
18. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-4.
19. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 9.
20. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 9; Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-3.
21. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 9-10, 56-68.
22. The trails were not named officially, and local names and usages differ.
23. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 16, 55-68.
24. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 79-87; Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-5.
25. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-3.
26. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 56.
27. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 16.
28. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 71-75.
29. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', pp. E-5, 6.
30. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', p. 5; Berton, ''The Impossible Railway'', p.25.
31. Piehl, ''A Few Thoughts About Red River Carts''.
32. Fonseca, ''On the St. Paul Trail in the Sixties''.
33. Piehl, ''A Few Thoughts About Red River Carts''.
34. Piehl, ''A Few Thoughts About Red River Carts''.
35. Piehl, ''A Few Thoughts About Red River Carts''; Berton, ''The Impossible Railway'', p. 25.
36. Berton, ''The Impossible Railway'', p. 25. This noise can be endured by listening to a recording of a cart, from the website of the Clay County, Minnesota Historical Society.
37. McFadden, ''Steamboating on the Red.
38. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-6.
39. Gilman, ''Red River Trails'', pp. 21-26.
40. Lass, ''Minnesota's Boundary with Canada'', pp. 32-33, 72-73. The 49th parallel was established as the border in 1818, extinguishing old British claims to the Red River valley, part of the watershed of Hudson's Bay and therefore part of Rupert's Land within the Hudson's Bay Company's 1670 charter. Major Stephen Long's expedition to Pembina located the 49th parallel border and was an assertion of U.S. control. Nute, ''Rainy River Country'', pp. 27-28.
41. Bowsfield, ''The United States and Red River Settlement''.
42. Kelsey, ''Red River Runs North!'', p. 143; Berton, ''The Impossible Railway'', pp. 14-18, 20, 25, 497-98.
43. Lass, ''Minnesota's Boundary with Canada'', p. 72; Bowsfield, ''The United States and Red River Settlement''; ''see also'' Gilman, ''The Red River Trails'', p. 25.
44. Bell, ''Some Red River Settlement History'', Bowsfield, ''Canada-America Relations: The Background'', and Bowsfield, ''The United States and Red River Settlement''.
45. Upon assimilation of the North West Company in 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company abandoned use of the former concern's border route in favor of the route to York Factory, which was cheaper to operate and allowed single-season shipments to and from Europe. HBC Heritage, ''The North West Company''; Morse, ''Fur Trade Routes of Canada'', p. 48. In 1858 the company gave up use of the York Factory route for furs from the Selkirk Settlement and used the Red River Trails instead. Hess, ''Minnesota Red River Trails'', p. E-5; Kelsey, ''Red River Runs North!'', p. 146. In 1870 the Dawson Route was established along the line of the old voyageur's border route from Fort William, Ontario, but was much inferior to the Red River routing. ''See'' Berton, ''The Impossible Railway'', pp. 35-38; Morrison, ''Dawson Road''.
46. Killion, ''Historic Trade Corridors: Vital Links Follow Nature's Bounty''.

Sources

Websites ★ Some Red River Settlement History, , Charles N., Bell, MHS Transactions, ★ The Red River Cart and Trails: The Fur Trade, , Harry Baker, Brehaut, MHS Transactions, ★ Canadian-American Relations: The Background, , Hartwell, Bowsfield, MHS Transactions, ★ The United States and Red River Settlement, , Hartwell, Bowsfield, MHS Transactions, ★ On the St. Paul Trail in the Sixties, , William G., Foseca, MHS Transactions, ★ The North West Company ★ Minnesota Red River Trails ★ Historic Trade Corridors: Vital Links Follow Nature's Bounty ★ Steamboating on the Red, , Molly, McFadden, MHS Transactions, ★ Dawson Road ★ A Few Thoughts About Red River Carts

External links

★ TimePieces: Red River Trails map