"The Fur Trade &The Lumber Industry"by Carl Krog
The fur trade and the lumber industry were the first commercial empires to enter the northern Great Lakes region. The industries had much in common. Both industries ruthlessly and relentlessly exploited the resources of the region. At first, a specific resource was taken such as beaver pelts or white pine logs. Later, other, less valuable trees and animals were taken, after the original resource had largely been eliminated.
Both industries were dependent on North America’s waterways to move their commodities. The fur trade followed the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers west from Montreal, and after a short portage, followed the Lake Nipissing-French River flowage down to Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. After traveling across Lake Huron to Mackinac, fur traders would continue down to Green Bay. Paddling up the Fox, and then portaging at Portage, the fur traders followed the Wisconsin River down to the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien.
Wisconsin’s lumber industry floated logs down the tributaries of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan-Green Bay to sawmill towns such as La Crosse or Marinette-Menominee. From these cities the lumber continued its journey to market either down river or south to the lake port of Chicago where the lumber was shipped west on rail to the farms and towns of the Midwest.
Both industries were dependent upon “hubs” or distribution centers which organized and directed the enterprise. Geography is destiny. The waterways dictated how and where the “hubs” developed. Montreal, at the end of ocean navigation, where the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers meet, and St Louis near the confluence of the Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers were early fur trading centers, and until railroads changed transportation patterns, the major distribution points of the Mississippi and the St Lawrence-Great Lakes drainage basins. The completion of the major trunk railroads made Chicago, the hub of the nation’s railroads and the metropolis of the Midwest after 1870.
Both the fur trade and the lumber industry were dependent upon partnerships. Junior partners or key knowledgeable employees who secured the furs or logs out on the frontier were vital for the success of the enterprise. “Hivernants” or “winterers” spent winters at trading posts in the interior, exchanging trade goods for pelts, and often marrying women from prominent families of the region.
In Marinette, the junior partners of Chicago lumber companies, Isaac Stephenson, of the Nelson Ludington Company and Frederick Carney, of the H. Witbeck Company are well known names. Both men knew the woods here, were skilled millwrights and good managers, and when they were young, lived in the company boarding houses with their workers. Isaac Stephenson eventually bought control of the firm from his Chicago partners during the 1880s.
Self-reliant and fiercely independent men and women, it is claimed, moved to the frontier. Large corporations dominated both the lumber and fur trade early on. After the Hudson Bay Company (founded 1670) absorbed its only major rival, the Northwest Company in 1821, there was only one fur trading company in Canada. After the War of 1812, America’s first millionaire, John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company largely controlled the American fur trade from two regional centers, Mackinac and St. Louis.
Marinette and her two trading partners, John Jacobs and William Farnsworth, were “independent traders” who survived in spite of the fierce competition and harassment from the American Fur Company post, six miles upriver at Chappee Rapids run first by Stanislas Chappee and then by John Kittson.
The fur trade, the lumber companies, and the United States Army created the first small islands of agricultural settlement on the American frontier. Wisconsin’s two oldest Euro-American communities, Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, originally French Canadian-Indian settlements were the first small areas of agriculture. Army garrisons at Fort Howard at the mouth of the Fox River in Green Bay and at Fort Crawford near the mouth of the Wisconsin River at Prairie du Chien added to these small areas of cultivation. Until some of their employees began farming in the “cutover”, lumber companies often set up their own farms.
Both fur trading and lumber companies operated in the woods of North America –far removed from the centers of government authority. Once voyageurs left the tightly controlled St Lawrence valley they were on their own, and largely beyond the reach of the religious and government authorities at Quebec. Lumber companies and their employees followed similar patterns of self-reliant independent behavior.
Definitions
Metis a person of mixed ancestry; part American Indian and part French Canadian. Metis such as Marinette Chevalier and Charles de Landglade straddled both cultures and played important roles in the transition from a French Canadian culture to an Anglo-American society and economy.
Voyageur, “traveler”; a man employed by a fur trading company to transport goods to and from remote trading posts.
Coureur de bois, “runner of the woods”; illicit traders who “free lanced”, instead of working within the legal fur trade monopoly.
Manguer de lard “pork eater” novices, a man who was beginning his career as a fur trader and returned home during the winter months
Hivernant “winterer”, a veteran fur trader who spent the winter at remote posts in the interior
The Water Route West
- Montreal
- Ottawa River
- Lake Nipissing
- French River
- Georgian Bay
- Fox River
- Portage
- Wisconsin River