Voyageur's Highway: Minnesota's Border Lake Land

Voyageurs

r 7 Voyageurs THE VOYAGEURS of the North West Company imparted to the life of the fur-trading regime a sparkle that can be caught even at this distant day. Every year in the early summer brigades of canoes laden with furs and some pemmican passed eastward over the border-lakes canoe route from wintering posts in the South and West, en route to the annual meeting of the North West Company at Grand Portage.' In July they returned over the same way to their wintering posts for another season. Thus the border lakes saw twice every season large numbers of staid company partners (bourgeois), young clerks (conzmix ) training to become bourgeois, and canoemen (voyageurs ). These men wore feather plumes in their caps, or were entitled to do so, for they had been baptized Nor'Westers on their first portage trip across the height of land between North and South Lakes. The baptism was a ceremony never omitted when pork-eaters, as the inexperienced voyageurs were called, or untrained traders passed that way. It consisted of being sprinkled by a cedar bough dipped in water and of promising never to allow a newcomer to get past the portage without a similar experience. Winterers (hivernants),who as the name signified had already spent at least one winter in the region, It was pemmican, the dried and pounded meat of buffaloes, that enabled canoemen to use the Grand Portage canoe route. Food from Canada could not be transported beyond Grand Portage in trade canoes. So pemmican was made at prairie forts, particularly on the Assiniboine River, and shipped by canoe to Grand Portage. 48 voyageurs , THE VOYAGEURS of the North West Company imparted to the life of the fur-trading regime a sparkle that can be caught even at this distant day. Every year in the early summer brigades of canoes laden with furs and some pemmican passed eastward over the border-lakes canoe route from wintering posts in the South and West, en route to the annual meeting of the North West Company at Grand Ponage.1 In July they returned over the same way to their wintering posts for another season. Thus the border lakes saw twice every season large numbers of staid company partners (bourgeois), young clerks (commis ) training to become bourgeois, and canoemen (voya· geurs). These men wore feather plumes in their caps, or were entitled to do so, for they had been baptized Nor'Westers on their first ponage trip across the height of land between North and South Lakes. The baptism was a ceremony never omitted when pork-eaters, as the inexperienced voyageurs were called, or untrained traders passed that way. It consisted of being sprinkled by a cedar bough dipped in water and of promising never to allow a newcomer to get past the portage without a similar experience. Winterers (hivernants), who as the name signified had already spent at least one winter in the region, 1 It was pemmican, the dried and pounded meat of buffaloes, that enabled canoemen to use the Grand Portage canoe route. Food from Canada could not be transponed beyond Grand Ponage in trade canoes. So pemmican was made at prairie fans, panicularly on the Assiniboine River, and shipped by canoe to Grand Ponage. Voyageurs were, of course, exempt from the ritual. After the ceremony, which closed with a salvo of shots, the new Nor’Wester was expected to treat all hands to shrub or high wine-the real object of the affair. The same reward was in view in another ceremony-the making of a lob pine, or Maypole, as it was frequently called. A pine, usually of great size and prominence, preferably on a height or point of land silhouetted against the sky-line at night, was selected by the voyageurs passing along the canoe route. A man was deputed to climb it, ax in hand, and lop (lob!) off the central branches. Thus the tree was left naked and conspicuous in the middle, a landmark for all future travelers. It was formally named for some individual of the party, usually a bourgeois or guest of the group. The person thus honored was expected to respond by giving his canoe mates a liquid treat. Lob pines are said to be still standing on the Kaministikwia route between Fort William and Lac La Croix, on Knife Lake, Cecil Lake, and at other points, lone survivors of a picturesque era now gone forever. One of the important lob pines in...