Pierre de la verendrye biography of rory

1. In , a leading official of the North West Company was able to write correctly that the fur trade was British America's most important commerce. This is in contrast to the United States where the fur trade was of much less importance in relation to other industries. "Some account of the trade carried on by the North West Company", photostat, 23 pages, or , Public Archives, Ottawa. Much of this account is believed to have been written by William McGillivray, who hereafter will be identified as the author. This account has been published in Authur G. Doughty, Report of the Public Archives for the Year (Ottawa, ), pp. See also Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada, an Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto, U. of Toronto Press, ) p.

2. Europeans believed that the Pacific Ocean lay not very far beyond the Great Lakes. This misconception was the driving force behind much of the early exploration. Even after the breadth of North America was recognized, explorers maintained a fierce rivalry in trying to find routes of communication, by water if possible, across or around the continent. With regard to missionaries, Alexander Begg, History of the North-West (3 vols., Toronto, Hunter, Rose & Co., and ), 1, 63, says that Fathers Joques and Raymbault visited Lake Superior in

3. Solon J. Buck, "The Story of Grand Portage", Minnesota History Bulletin, 5 (), 15; Innis, Fur Trade, p.

4. Innis, Fur Trade, pp. , , and ; W. McGillivray.

5. Wayne E. Stevens, "The Organization of the British Fur Trade, ", The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 3, (), ; W. McGillivray.

6. Spelled a variety of ways in the historical sources, and spelled by the North West Company most often as Kaministiquia, this river appears here in the official form recognized by the Government of Canada.

7. Innis, Fur Trade, p. 49; Buck, p. 15; Marcel Giraud, History of Canada (Paris, University Presses of Canada, ), trans. by Harold S. Boedeke

The early s brought two events that would have a profound effect on the history of Grand Portage.

In and , one of the worst epidemics in North American history swept across the western half of the continent. It was smallpox. The horror of it was still fresh for traders who wrote years after: it "spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread around with a baneful rapidity which no flight could escape. . . . it destroyed . . . whole families and tribes." [1]

The disease seems to have started on the Missouri River and spread north and west till it decimated the population as far as Athabasca. The casualty rate was higher than the Black Death in Europe&#;most estimates said two-thirds of the population died. Whole villages stood deserted. Hungry dogs mauled the corpses, for no one was left to bury them. One fur trader who went west that year first learned of the tragedy when he met a few survivors who were "in such a state of despair and despondence that they could hardly converse with us. . . . We proceeded up the River with heavy hearts. . . . When we arrived at the House instead of a crowd of Indians to welcome us, all was solitary silence, our hearts failed us." [2]

The population of northern Minnesota did not escape. Ojibway tradition says that a war party of Cree, Assiniboine, and Ojibway went to attack a village on the Missouri River but found it inhabited only by the dead. They brought the disease back to the Red River, from which it spread to Rainy Lake, then to Grand Portage, and south to Leech and Sandy lakes. Years later a traveler in this region commented, "This great extent of country was formerly very populous, but [now] the aggregate of its inhabitants does not exceed three hundred warriors; and, among the few whom I saw, it appeared to me that the widows were more numerous than the men." [3]

It would be hard to overstate the effect of the epidemic on

Chapter 2: Fur Trade and the Rendezvous System

The brief year period of the fur trade rendezvous in Wyoming illustrates enduring truths in the economic development of the state. While none of the events occurred in the 20th century, striking parallels can be drawn from the fur trade which help explain the evolution of later industries in Wyoming, including agriculture and cattle, tourism and the mineral industry. The product was natural resource-based, the market for the product was virtually non-existent within the state, and it was subject to wild fluctuations in prices depending on international trends. 

It must be emphasized that none of these characteristics are unique to Wyoming. Similar conditions apply to any colonial economy. Nonetheless, what makes studying the fur trade period useful is that, to a great extent, Wyoming remains colonial. Even two decades into the new millennium, primary products come from natural resource extraction rather than from manufacturing. Further, like employees in modern-day mining, the earliest white travelers never considered Wyoming as a place for permanent settlement. It was simply a route to somewhere else. Locating in what is now Wyoming was a temporary sojourn or else it was simply harsh passage toward more promising opportunities in other directions.

The origins of the fur trade in Wyoming and to the use of Wyoming as a trail can be traced to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Although the famed explorers never stepped foot into Wyoming, the interest they generated from their reports after their return fueled tremendous interest in the West. Further, one of their party, John Colter, became the first white American to step foot within Wyoming. Colter, a Virginia-born, probably illiterate mountain man, went with the famous explorers to the West Coast.Prior to the onset of the expedition, he signed (or applied his mark on) the agreement that he would not be