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| North West Company Inland Headquarters |
Serendipity creates the best adventures, and our discovery
of Grand Portage National Monument (Happy 100th B’day NPS!) is one
of those. We were driving to scope out
the ferry that would take us to Isle Royale National Park the next day and came upon this
marvelous place.
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| Bread Oven |
Grand Portage MN is a tiny, tiny town along the northwestern
shore of Lake Superior, in the middle of the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, just a few
miles from the Canadian border and the better known Thunder Bay, Ontario. The landscape is classic North Woods. Dark pine trees punctuated with slender white
birch trees and grey granite outcroppings.
Lake Superior laps moodily on the rocky shoreline.
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| View from the porch of the stockade fence with Lake Superior behind |
It was here between 1784 and 1803 that the North West
Company established an inland headquarters trading post to facilitate their
profitable fur trade.
The high demand
for beaver pelts to make beaver hats had decimated the beaver population in
Europe.
Beaver were plentiful in the
mostly uncharted New World.
French speaking
Voyageurs paddled their canoes into the wilderness, and traded European goods
to the Indians in exchange for beaver pelts.
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| 40 foot long birch bark canoe like the ones used by the Voyageurs |
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| Interior showing intricate construction |
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| 100 year old birch bark canoe |
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Grand Portage means Big Carrying Place in French.
Each summer Voyageurs who had spent the
winter living amongst the Native Americans would canoe toward Grand Portage
with their canoes loaded with pelts.
The
last part of the trip was a long portage over a mountain from the Pigeon River
to the outpost on Lake Superior.
Meanwhile another set of Voyaguers would leave from Montreal with canoes
loaded with European goods like blankets, knives, tools and beads.
The two sets of Voyageurs would meet up at
Grand Portage and exchange goods.
They
called it the Rendez Vous.
Then the
Voyageurs who lived amongst the Indians would return with trade goods, and the
Voyageurs from Montreal would return with the pelts to Montreal.
The pelts would then be loaded on ships for
Europe.
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| Indian village |
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| Costumed interpreter |
The site has a wonderful visitors center, an Indian village
and a rebuilt fort with 3 of the buildings.
Interpreters in costume portray Indians, Voyageurs and members of the
North West Company management.
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| Warehouse |
What makes this Monument so special is that the focus is on
the mutually profitable collaboration between the Indians and Europeans. The Voyageurs learned to make and paddle birch
bark canoes from the Indians. They
depended on the Indians not only for beaver pelts, but for food and wisdom of living
in the cold, inhospitable North Woods.
In return the Indians got goods that were useful to them. An Ojibwe woman leader translated
and negotiated with the Company on behalf of the Indians. The Monument is the only National Park
co-managed with the tribe and the National Park Service.
