It’s yet another Minnesota Historical Society site and it’s just as exciting as every other MNHS site we’ve visited. We arrived at the Snake River Fur Post in a light rain on the Saturday before the Fourth and were the only visitors on the tour with Jackie, our costumed interpreter. Dovetailing nicely with other opportunities we’ve recently had to learn about the Ojibwe peoples, this museum interprets the winter of 1804-05 when John Sayer of the North West Trading Company arrived with French Canadian Vogageurs, a British Canadian clerk, an Ojibwe wife, and tons of manufactured goods to establish a post from which to trade with the local Ojibwe band near their winter camp. It’s a part of early 19th Century global trade. The elite in England desired beaver hats, an important status symbol in their society, and the natives found English manufactured goods extremely useful in the maintaining their own way of life. We relished the opportunity to learn more about the Witney blankets, to try on a beaver top hat, and to learn about the intricacies of the fur trade in this era and how it fit into the big sweep of world history as well as how this particular site was rediscovered and reconstructed in the 20th Century.
Steve looks good in that hat! Sounds like a fascinating place!
It is indeed. If you’re a history geek you could easily spend a whole month or more in Minnesota exploring the MNHS sites.