Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains: Canadian Traders among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738-1818.

Authors

James A. Hanson, Lincoln, NebraskaFollow

Date of this Version

1987

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 7:1 (Winter 1987). Copyright © 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

The permanent villages of farming Indians on the Upper Missouri were a central focus for trade in prehistoric times. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, both French and Spanish traders had reach ed the area, and by the early nineteenth century, the Mandan- Hidatsa villages had come to be a Parisian entrepot for the buffalo hunting tribes, the St. Louis and Canadian traders, and the artists and explorers of young America. While the drive up the Missouri from St. Louis is well documented, Wood and Thiessen have unveiled for us an exciting story of the important and early Canadian connection of North Dakota's Mandan-Hidatsa towns.