Commerce
The trails were first used to obtain seed and supplies for the Selkirk colony. They soon became trade routes for local fur traders, and in the 1830s began to be heavily used by American fur traders operating just south of the international border. The Americans acquired furs from Métis fur traders in British North America who were evading the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly on trade within its chartered domain.
The settlement at Fort Garry was isolated and at the end of a 700-mile (1,100 km) water and land route from York Factory, which was served by only one or two ships each year. Orders from Britain had to be placed a year in advance. But from Saint Paul, the settlers could obtain staples and other goods in the span of a single summer. In the face of these relative inconveniences and the economy of shipping over the trails, the Hudson’s Bay Company was unable to compel all trade to go by way of York Factory on Hudson Bay, and by 1850 the company’s monopoly was broken. In fact, the company itself all but abandoned the York Factory route for heavy trade in 1857, and instead shipped its own traffic in bond through the United States and over the Red River Trails.
The principal export from the Red River settlements was fur, but as the colony passed from a subsistence economy to one producing more than could be consumed locally the agricultural surplus was also sent south by ox cart. The imports were more varied; originally they were seed, spices, and other staples, liquor, tools, implements, and hardware. In midcentury the buffalo herds declined, and traffic in furs began to be replaced by the produce and needs of settlers. As settlement developed the trails became a "common carrier" for all manner of goods that could be carried by ox cart, including lamps and coal oil to burn in them, fine cloth, books, general merchandise, champagne, sheet-metal stoves, disassembled farm machinery and at least one piano, and a printing press and other accoutrements for the first newspaper in the Fort Garry region.
Read more about this topic: Red River Trails
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