by Nikki Rajala | Feb 16, 2026 | Featured
For youth, Bigfork’s tiny public library had one short shelf of biographies, jacketed in red and yellow, illustrated with black and white drawings. After finishing the life stories of all the women (maybe 7 total), I kept on, reading about men like Lewis and...
by Nikki Rajala | Feb 7, 2026 | Voyageur
Tom H. Holloway, a research volunteer at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, sent me this piece. He’d been asked how common Hudson’s Bay blankets with a multicolored stripe (or candy stripe) were in the West Coast fur trade. To answer it, he did...
by Nikki Rajala | Dec 9, 2025 | Voyageur
Q: How did voyageurs celebrate Christmas? A: Not like we do. Our favorite holiday traditions hadn’t been invented yet, so no Ho-Ho-Hos, no Santa, no tree or decorations, no cookies or concerts, no Nutcracker or Christmas Carol performances, no Grinch or Charlie...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 13, 2025 | Voyageur
I met Brian Hardy at the Huot Chautauqua where he was portraying a fur trader. Interestingly, he gets paid to dress up in historical costumes — he’s the outreach coordinator for the Pembina State Museum, a part of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, in...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 6, 2025 | Voyageur
A few years ago at a presentation, someone asked me: Why were French-Canadian voyageurs’ paddles red? We considered a few possibilities: Was it to show them how deep they should paddle? Not really — within a few hours of paddling, even newbie voyageurs would...
