Page "lore" Paragraph 548

The Selkirk settlers had been anticipated in their move southward by British fur traders.

For many years the Northwest Company had its southern headquarters at Prairie Du Chien on the Mississippi River, some 300 miles southeast of present-day St. Paul, Minnesota.

When in 1816 an act of Congress forced the foreign firm out of the United States, its British-born employees, now become American citizens -- Joseph Rolette, Joseph Renville and Alexis Bailly -- continued in the fur business.

On Big Stone Lake near the headwaters of the Red River, Robert Dickson, Superintendent of the Western Indian Department of Canada, had a trading post and planned in 1818 to build a fort to be defended by twenty men and two small artillery pieces.

His trading goods came from Canada to the Forks of Red River and from Selkirk's settlement he brought them south in carts.

These carts were of a type devised in Pembina in the days of Alexander Henry the Younger about a decade before the Selkirk colony was begun.

In 1802 Henry referred to `` our new carts '' as being about four feet off the ground and carrying five times as much as a horse could pack.

They were held together by pegs and withes and in later times drawn by a single ox in thills.