Celebrating Native American and European Collaboration at an Unexpected National Park, Grand Portage MN [July 22, 2016]

North West Company Inland Headquarters

Serendipity creates the best adventures, and our discovery of Grand Portage National Monument (Happy 100^th 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.

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.

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.

40 foot long birch bark canoe like the ones used by the Voyageurs

Interior showing intricate construction

100 year old birch bark canoe

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.

Indian village

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.

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.