The Great Carrying Place

Ojibwe birch wigwam

Stepping into a birch wigwam, the scent of pine immediately infiltrates the senses. Pine boughs and furs line the floor. Nancy and I stood in that wigwam for 20 minutes, the smells ensuring we didn’t waste a second. A staff member in a late 18th-century period outfit pointed out the wigwam’s features and how the family lived well in seemingly tight quarters.

It’s hard not to admire the intimate setup – the family slept comfortably together in a space smaller than a tiny modern bedroom, everyone in their proper place from children to grandparents. They wedged little places of storage into the support beams.

Outside the wigwam, cisco (lake herring) smoked on a rack above a fragrant fire, another smell worth savoring. Grand Portage had no shortage of enticing sights and smells.

Mt. Josephine, GP Reservation

We drove through the monument the previous day, glimpsing a different scenario than the pleasant fort and recreated post buildings. Campers, motor homes and tents dominated free space around the monument, where reenactors camped during Rendezvous Days.

The reenactors dial the calendar back two centuries to the rendezvous, the busiest time of the year at Grand Portage. At the annual rendezvous, the fur traders returned to sell their furs and resupply (the television movie of James Michener’s Centennial depicts a similar mountain man gathering).

To enjoy Rendezvous Days, held on the second weekend of August, our trip needed an extra day. After a three-hour roundtrip to Isle Royale and 4-plus miles of hiking, neither of us had much urge to join in the Grand Portage reservation’s biggest festival.

Fish smoking on an open fire

Fortunately, Grand Portage does not shut down once Rendezvous Days conclude. The national monument stays busy all summer, and the period reenactors still smoked fish and wove blankets the next day.

In its day, Grand Portage was a gateway, tying the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean to fur traders traipsing across the interior. Long before the North West Company founded its outpost, local tribes walked their canoes more than 8 miles upstream past the Pigeon River’s cascades. Past the falls, the interconnectedness of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Voyageurs National Park once propelled these commercial ventures.

Six miles south of the Canadian border, Grand Portage is the final stop of any size before the road rises into the most mountainous stretch of Minnesota’s Superior shore. Past Grand Portage’s casino-resort, the monument’s modern gateway is a state-of-the-art visitor center with artifacts from the fur trading period and its deeper tribal history.

Voyageur

The pilots of the North West Company’s early commercial vessels were the French voyageurs, the contribution to the region honored in the name of Minnesota’s only national park.

Voyageurs were a peculiar looking bunch, with squat physiques and massive arms from rowing. Voyageurs rowed 40-foot canoes carrying four tons of cargo across Lake Superior hugging the shore. After seeing its blue depths on the Island Royale trip and imaging open water in such a vessel, that decision seemed sensible. They also carried cargo using straps they placed on their foreheads, which somehow worked for them.

Once the voyageurs crossed the Great Lakes, these chiseled men followed the Indian route, carried their boats 8 miles past the waterfalls along the Pigeon River to Fort Charlotte, where they could move into the boundary waters and travel thousands of miles beyond Lake Superior.

We forget that watershed provided the highways of a wilder North America. No portage in the wilds of Minnesota extended more than 10 miles, and fur trappers could move deep into the North American continent in search of beaver hunting grounds.

In the canoe warehouse, Grand Portage houses a replica of the huge voyageur canoes, along with other boats used during the portage’s heyday. The storeroom would have kept the birch canoes out of the sun, which can warp the birch wood.

Commercial activity around Grand Portage would not have been constant. Most of the year, a skeleton crew or less operated the trading post. The Grand Hall sat empty until the summer arrived, when the annual rendezvous arrived.

Voyageur canoe stored in the warehouse

Further north lies Grand Portage State Park, which runs along the American side of the Pigeon River, including High Falls, the state’s largest waterfall. The Grand Portage tribe and the state jointly manage the park, the only management of its kind in the U.S. Unlike many tribes, the Grand Portage band of Chippewa retained part of their ancestral lands and were not relocated. Although certainly less land that what encompasses their ancestral migrations, they could claim to be the original inhabitants of the parcels they still controlled.

The reconstructed Great Hall

It’s hard to think of the post as a nuisance, since the local tribes had a nexus for trade, and items such as blankets drew high demand.

The post ran its course more than two centuries ago. The trading company at Grand Portage only operated until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, shutting down and moving north of the Canadian border to avoid American taxes. The company restarted operations at Fort William, its fort now restored as a Canadian historic site.

Wall hanging in the Great Hall

The reconstructed Great Hall lies behind the stockade fence, which opens onto a dock in Grand Portage Bay. Period furniture and dinnerware fill the spacious dining room and the corner bedrooms where the company’s partners stayed a few nights a year. The long wooden tables had period dinnerware. The walls bore photos of North West Company executives, as well as some interesting tribal pieces.

Only the executives got use of the bedrooms. Voyageurs and trappers slept on the grounds during the rendezvous, the trappers in their tents and the voyageurs under their canoes. These men were accustomed to rough accommodations.

Behind the hall stood a kitchen warmed by coals from cooking fire. Busy with preparing a meal, the cooks paid us no mind.

The historic garden and gardener inside the Grand Portage palisade

As the rain eased, we exited to the massive garden. Nancy spoke briefly with the lady tending their garden. While not restored to its original state – the garden would have been outside the stockade fence – she pruned and collected vegetables and herbs from its many rows. The garden inside the fence followed a European style of planting, while a separate garden outside the fence followed native gardening techniques with their three staples - corn, beans and squash. The gardens are planted with heirloom vegetables. Because seeds are passed down through generations of Ojibwe, the gardens can grow the same produce that fed the post two centuries ago.

The cooler climate alters the garden’s composition. The gardeners don’t waste space on warm-weather crops here. I spotted tomatoes only now revealing tiny yellow flowers. The sun-hungry plants received less sunlight and cooler temperatures on Superior, slowing their maturation.

In Grand Portage Bay, a lone double-crested cormorant bobbed in the rain, the only living thing on the surface between the dock and Grand Portage Island. We saw dozens of similar waterfowl surrounding the Rock of Ages lighthouse, but the solitary bird always strikes a better post.

The rain hastened, and the cormorant seemed unfazed. With its hooked yellow beak and calm demeanor, the bird seemed ready to dive for fish at any second. Sometimes seeing a majestic bird along is treat enough. At the Great Carrying Place, a lone cormorant sufficed for wildlife amid this patch of rich, unheralded history.

Double-crested cormorant