When the Hudson’s Bay Company began its interaction and business with the Native inhabitants of the Red River Valley above and below the 49th Parallel, it found that the missionaries had preceded them.  However, it remained for the fur company to establish on a substantial scale the fur industry.

It was destined to become for scores of years the leading industry of North America.  It gave employment to thousands of people in procuring, transporting, and disposing of the raw material.

It was after the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, an event that greatly interrupted the fur trade, the trading post built by Selkirk was discovered by some British astronomers to be located south of the boundary line between Canada and the United States.  Selkirk had been and was intensely hostile to Uncle Sam and was always heartily loyal to John Bull.

He had the trading post removed to Fort Garry, near Winnipeg.  The Hudson’s Bay folks, however, constructed another post, safely, as they supposed, within the British domain, but near enough to the border to give them control of the fur traffic of the Pembina country.

The Northwest Fur Company, chartered by the Canadian government in 1780, had become a powerful and aggressive rival of the Hudson’s Bay. The competition between these rival organizations at times led to extreme violence and open warfare. Their difficulties were finally settled in 1821 by merging the Northwest with the Hudson.

Trade in furs and peltry was extensively carried on in Dakota Territory from 1790 to 1865.  It was the chief occupation of the region for which both whites and Indians were engaged.

This was about the time the first American traders appeared on the upper Mississippi River and all along the Missouri River. Fort Snelling, at the mouth of the Minnesota River, was built by the United States Government in 1820. Jesuit missionaries had already made their way into the area.  They were joined by other denominations. Leaders in the fur industry felt that the secular interests of the country as well as the spiritual welfare of the people would be greatly enhanced by the labors of all Christian denominations.

The fur industry had brought into the country, largely as employees of the rival companies, a number of British subjects of excellent business qualifications, and a much larger number of French Canadians.  The trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company not only covered the Red River and its tributaries, but extended to the Missouri River where many flourishing trading posts existed.  This influx of white people, males only as a rule, had the natural result of much intermarriage with the native Indian women.  Within several years the country included many mixed bloods.

The earliest white settlement in what was to become Dakota Territory was that of Pembina.  It was established a few years before the formation of the government of the United States.

The 49th parallel was known as the northern boundary of the United States, from the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains. However, at this time it had never been definitely established, identified and marked.

Major Stephen Long, United States Army, led an exploring and scientific expedition from the headwaters of the Red River of the North along that Valley to Pembina and Canada in 1823.  At that time, he located the 49th parallel by astronomical observations.

The new trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company was discovered to be on the United States side of the border. It was moved across the border and re-erected on what was ascertained to be British soil.

An historian who accompanied Major Long found an old white trader living at the mouth of the Pembina River, who claimed to have been there over forty years earlier. That made the settlement of the community to be about the same year in which the Northwest Fur Company was organized.

The founding of the fur company was followed by the immigration of a large number of French Canadians to the Hudson’s Bay and Red River country. The Red River settlements of that day were in no way connected with the country farther to the southwest; however, they gradually grew toward the Missouri River in North Dakota under the enterprise of the fur companies.

K. Armstrong, of Yankton, who visited Pembina in 1867, was leading a surveying expedition to establish the seventh guide meridian (a line that is marked by monuments between other more carefully established meridians that is used for reference in surveying). He met a man who claimed to be seventy-six years old. He had come over to the Hudson’s Bay Territory in 1810 and settled in Pembina in 1821.

The Public Land Survey System, a surveying method developed and used in America to plat real property for sale and settling was proposed by Thomas Jefferson. With little power to tax, the government decided to use the sale of the Western Territories to pay off the debt.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on November 22, 2023