Gingras Trading Post website

Metis Culture website

Red River OxCart Trail

The Native American people in the Red River Valley harvested berries, acorns, and hazelnuts from the area. Pike, catfish, drum, and turtles were harvested from the river, along with freshwater clams which were made into ornaments and tools.

Bison, deer, elk, beaver, muskrat, squirrel, and raccoon were hunted and/or trapped. The archeological record also reveals that ducks were consumed by early people.

Late Prehistory – Just Before the Arrival of Europeans

Before Euro-American contact, Chippewa (also called Ojibway and Ojibwe), Dakota, Assiniboine, Cree, and Cheyenne Indian tribes traveled in and out of the Red River Valley. They led a nomadic lifestyle, hunting, fishing, and gathering plants. They lived in tipis covered with birch bark or tanned hides, depending upon what was readily available.

They made their tools from natural materials such as stone, shell, wood, and bone. In the 1700s, European goods such as metal, cloth, glass, and steel began arriving in Pembina through trade with other Native groups.

Bison Hide Tipi located at the NDSHS (ND State Historical Society) Museum in Bismarck, ND

The Hunt

Pembina County was the first county with white inhabitants, many of whom were French who migrated from Canada in the 1800s. They intermarried with the native peoples forming a new culture, called the Metis. The Metis culture was strong in Manitoba and conflict developed there when English settlement of the area ignored Metis concerns.

In North Dakota, the Red River Carts were symbols of Metis ingenuity and sturdy determination. Their carts were ideally adapted to conditions of the time, having no metal parts and with high wheels to traverse mud, brush, and streams. Pulled by oxen, they carried 900 pounds of furs and meat from the hunt, furs to Canada and St. Paul and supplies on the return trip.

The coming of the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s, however, began what could be termed the beginning of the modern era of transportation and with them the demise of all forms of long distance animal transport. They also brought rapid settlement to the area.