by Nikki Rajala | Apr 16, 2020 | Featured
It’s a book. Want great info with lots of pix? You can’t go wrong with The Great Northwest Fur Trade: A Material Culture, 1763-1850, by Ryan R. Gale. It’s a fascinating compendium of solid information (like candy for people like me who LOVE fun...
by Nikki Rajala | Jan 24, 2020 | Featured
Did voyageurs ever have fun? What did they during the winter? (Erin, 11, Taylor, 9) Usually winterers were busy with their Native American customers, because hunters visited fur posts during the autumn to start trading. But then came winter, when it was harder to...
by Nikki Rajala | Dec 27, 2019 | Featured
You thought I made a mistake on the date? Nope, I was curious — what kind of paddles did the fur trade brigades prefer? Surprise! They aren’t paddles like we see nowadays. Read more to discover the characteristics of the best paddles from an earlier century! For...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 22, 2019 | Featured
I’m having way too much fun finding about voyageur contracts. Look what history you can piece together from these contracts.* These are possible ancestors, all from Sorel. To illustrate the available info, I’ve created voyageur trading cards with some of...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 5, 2019 | Featured
In all my reading about Lewis and Clark, I never paid attention to the French-Canadian role on the expedition. Guess what we’re going to do today? Starting with President Thomas Jefferson, who read Alexander Mackenzie’s 1801 book about his 1792 overland...
by Nikki Rajala | Jul 14, 2019 | Featured
Looking for summer reading? Here are four stories of adventure in the northern woods and waters. The voyage changed the lives of the young canoeists — and the others had been hoping for years to make this trek. I paddled only a few times in the Boundary Waters or on...
