English Fur Traders on the St. Croix

A 54 year era of British control of the Great Lakes region (Lake Superior and Lake Michigan) lasted from the French surrender in 1760 until 1814 with the end of America's second war with England.  During this time the fur trade reached the peak of its prosperity.

 

Jonathan Carver was an explorer, author (and  because of his tireless self-promotion, the subject of controversy for over 200 years).  Carver image courtesy of James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

 

The source of the following excerpted text is McMahon, Eileen M. and Karamanski, Theodore J. 2002. Time and the River: A History of the St. Croix. National Park Service, Omaha, NE.

The section below starts in Chapter 1 after a short introduction of Alexander Henry, the first English fur trader in Lake Superior country.

 

While Alexander Henry did not venture far south of Lake Superior, Jonathan Carver, another young Englishman on the make, explored the Upper Mississippi frontier. Ostensibly Carver was a mapmaker sent with explorer James Tute, a Captain in the famed Roger's Rangers, to discover an inland route to the fabled Northwest Passage. Carver journeyed from Mackinac across Wisconsin and wintered among the Dakota villages of the Minnesota River valley. He was fascinated with the Dakota whom he described as "a very merry sociable people, full of mirth and good humor." He explored the Upper St. Croix valley by portaging from Lac Courte Oreilles to the Namekagon River near present day Hayward, Wisconsin. Carver descended the Namekagon, which he named "Tutes branch" to its junction with the main stream. James Goddard, the official secretary of the expedition, described the Namekagon as "a very pleasant country, and plenty of deer in it." Above the junction of the Namekagon and St. Croix Carver tried his hand at sturgeon fishing. "The manner of taking them is by watching them as they lie under the banks in a clear stream, and darting at them with a fish-spear; for they will not take a bait." Carver dubbed the St. Croix from the Namekagon to its source the "Coppermine Branch," due to the "abundance of copper" found along its banks. The region of the headwaters he laconically noted was known to the Chippewa as "the Moschettoe [mosquito] country, and I thought it most justly named; for, it being then their season, I never saw or felt so many of those insects in my life." More significantly for the future of the fur trade he noted that along the Upper St. Croix "rice grows in great plenty." Carver then followed the portage trail from Upper Lake St. Croix to the Bois Brule River and Lake Superior.

Although his time in the St. Croix valley was brief Carver's legacy lingered longer in the form of a narrative Travels Through North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768. This widely read and frequently translated account of the Upper Mississippi region provided generations of readers with their first exposure to the region.

Partial Bibliography:

Jonathan Carver, Travels Through North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768 (London: J. Walters and S. Crowder, 1778), 104-6, 476-7; James Stanley Goddard, "Journal of a Voyage, 1766-67," edited by Carolyn Gilman, The Journals of Jonathan Carver and Related Documents, edited by John Parker, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1976), 190.

 

British Transition

In his book Brule Country, Albert M. Marshall offers this account of Jonathan Carver's trip up the St. Croix River which starts as the junction of the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers.

Up the St. Croix the three principals [Jonathan Carver, Joseph Reaume, and Charles Gautier] and their men paddled, working their canoes to avoid the big, flat stones, and carrying their supplies around the many stretches of fast water.  Carver described the river as full of fish. "We caught a plenty of the best sturgeon I ever tasted," he testified.  Just below the mouth of the Ox River, they had their best luck, and he named the widening reaches there "Sturgeon Lake."  They reached the upper lake St. Croix and named it "Lily Lake," presumably for the water lilies which decorate in season its southern and northern extremities.  On July 7 [1767], according to Carver's log, the three Englishmen and their Indian retinue transported their canoes and baggage over the two-mile portage to the headwaters of the Brule.  "Here we put in our canoes, the stream not large enough for a small mill.  Was forced to make dams to raise the water for passage," writes the chronicler.

Partial Bibliography:

Carver, Jonathan. Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768. London, 1778.