When Karl left the Red River at Fargo, ND, he wrote: “I found nothing but a vast wheat field through which was a railway track and an old Hudson Bay Company's trail running parallel to the railway.”
It’s an interesting reference to the Hudson Bay Company (HBC), founded in 1670, familiar to Karl in 1899, while continuing to be known and relevant today.
In the 19th Century, the HBC was one of Canada's most significant fur-trading companies. The large fur company built trading posts exchanging pelts from fur trappers for guns, tobacco, ammunition, silver, and blankets. Yes, the iconic Hudson’s Bay point* blanket has been traded since 1779 and is still available for purchase today. The wool blanket was primarily traded for beaver pelts and then used by indigenous communities and trappers to make hooded coats.
There were over 500 HBC trading posts throughout North America at one time. These trading posts weren’t much more than a small cabin built near a river to facilitate the shipment of furs. There were many trading posts along the rich fur routes from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, north to Fargo, North Dakota, then along the Red River further north into Canada. Essentially the trail Karl had been following.
The roads between these posts became the ‘Red River Trails’ traversed by carts drawn by oxen or sometimes horses. By the 1860s, several thousand of these carts laden with furs had travelled between Minnesota and Manitoba.
The carts were constructed of wood and animal hides with two large wheels strong enough to carry 1,000 pounds. Over time, the repeated use of the route created deep ruts into the prairies, establishing this network of Red River trails. Traders used the trails extensively until the 1870s, when flatboats and steamboats started to transport the furs more efficiently, and then oxen were replaced by trains as the railway system expanded.
Over time, between lack of use, impacts of weather, and advancement of paved roadways, these trails disappeared.
When Karl biked through this area, it was a mere 20 years since the most active application of the Red River carts so the depressions in the ground would still have been prominent, as he noted.
As for me, I didn’t see any evidence of the Red River trails, but I connect to the HBC in other ways. For a few years as a teenager I worked for HBC, as did my sister. It was also the first job held by my mother upon moving to Canada, where she worked for over 20 years with co-workers who became close family friends.
In 1995, HBC celebrated its 325th birthday and gifted employees a print of a painting created in 1941 by Charles Fraser Comfort. The painting titled: Barnston and Ballantyne at Tadoussac, 1846 depicts fur traders, Barnston and Ballantyne — in their hooded coats made from point blankets — arriving at a HBC trading post in Tadoussac, Quebec.
*Points are short black lines woven into the finished edge of the blanket denoting the size of the blanket. Back in Karl’s day, the beds were smaller and the blankets would have been available in 2.5, 3, 3.5, and 4 point. Today, the blankets start at a 3.5 point which would fit a twin bed, 4 (double), 6 (queen), and 8 (king).