Fur Trade
For over two centuries, the North American fur trade brought American Indians and European-Canadians together in the mutual enterprise of exchanging native trapped furs for European manufactured goods. By the 1790s, the Montreal-based North West Company had extended its fur trade network from the St. Lawrence River valley to beyond the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Scattered across a vast network of waterways were over 100 wintering posts, each located near Indian hunting and trapping camps that were the main source of furs.
In the fall of 1804, John Sayer, a partner of the North West Company and his crew departed from Fort St. Louis, near modern-day Superior, Wis. Sayer originally intended to build a post near Cross Lake, but the location for his wintering operations changed to a site two miles up the Snake River, after he conferred with local Ojibwe leaders.
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