Red River Trails - Life On The Trail

Life On The Trail

The typical carter was a Métis descended from French voyageurs of the fur trade and their Ojibway spouses. His conveyance was the Red River ox cart, a simple vehicle derived either from the two-wheeled charrettes used in French Canada, or from Scottish carts. From 1801 on, this cart was modified so that it was made solely from local materials. It contained no iron at all. Instead it was constructed entirely of wood and animal hide. Two twelve-foot-long parallel oak shafts or "trams" bracketed the draft animal in front and formed the frame of the cart to the rear. Cross-pieces held the floorboards, while front, side and rear boards or rails enclosed the box. These wooden pieces were joined by mortices and tenons. The axle was also made of seasoned oak. It was lashed to the cart by strips of wet bison hide known by its Cree name of shaganappi, which shrank and tightened as they dried. The axles connected two spoked wheels, five or six feet in diameter, which were "dished" or in the form of a shallow cone, the apex of which was at the hubs, which were inboard of the rims. The carts were originally drawn by small horses obtained from the First Nations. After cattle were brought to the colony in the 1820s, oxen were used to haul the carts. They were preferred because of their strength, endurance, and cloven hooves which spread their weight in swampy areas.

The cart, constructed of native materials, could easily be repaired. A supply of shaganappi and wood was carried as a cart could break a half-dozen axles in a one-way trip. The axles were unlubricated, as grease would capture dust which would act as sandpaper and immobilize the cart. The resultant squeal sounded like an untuned violin, giving it the sobriquet of "the North West fiddle". One visitor wrote that "a den of wild beasts cannot be compared with its hideousness". The noise was audible for miles. The carts were completely unsprung, and only their flexible construction cushioned the shocks transmitted from the humps and hollows of the trail.

Southbound, the carts were loaded with fur, packed into the 90-pound (40 kg) bundles known in the fur trade as pièces. A cart could handle up to 800–1,000 pounds (360–450 kg). On their return the traders carried staples, trade goods, and manufactured goods unavailable at Fort Garry. In both directions, the cargo was covered with hide or canvas. The carts were lashed together in brigades of ten carts, with three drivers and an overseer. These brigades could join in trains up to two miles (three km) in length. Carts numbering in the low hundreds annually used the trails in the 1840s, many hundreds in the 1850s, and thousands in the late 1860s. These cart trains travelled about two miles (three km) an hour, and about twenty miles (thirty km) in a day.

After breaking camp in the morning, the carters set out across the prairie; transits of the unprotected open prairie between places of refuge were known as traverses. Streams often had to be forded; where the water was too deep, the carts were unloaded, the wheels were taken off and lashed together or affixed under the cart, the assemblage was covered with hide to form a hull, and the makeshift craft was reloaded and floated across. The traders endeavoured to ford a stream at the end of the day rather than start the next day with the crossing, to allow time to dry out overnight.

Streamside camps offered wood, water, and some protection from the hazards of open land. The prairie could be dangerous in time of native unrest, and trade ceased entirely for a time during the Dakota War of 1862. Prairie fires, driven by winds, were a risk in dry spells. Wet weather turned rivers into torrents, approaches to streams into bogs, and worn paths into morasses. Blizzards could strand traders and threaten them with starvation. Insects harassed both the traders and their draft animals, depriving them of sleep and weakening them.

There were compensations. Game was plentiful and the traders rarely lacked fresh meat. Some saw in the seemingly boundless prairies a colourful ocean of grass, and summer storms could be awe-inspiring, although dangerous. While the prairie had its own grandeur, after weeks of travel over treeless steppe the rivers, lakes, and woods of central Minnesota were a welcome relief.

After six or so weeks on the trail, the brigades reached Saint Paul. There the carters camped on the bluff above the town growing on the riverfront. Not all was harmonious. To the locals, the swarthy-complected carters up on the hill had a "devil-may-care" aspect, with their "curious commingling of civilized garments and barbaric adornments". One trader from the north called his host city "a wretched little village" where "drinking whisky seems to occupy at least half the time of the worth citizens", while the rest were "employed in cheating each other or imposing upon strangers." The economic benefits of trade, and the separation of the carters' camp from the village below, may have helped keep relations civil. After about three weeks of trading, the "wild" carters from the north, now laden with goods, took their leave of the "den of blackguards" that was Saint Paul, returning to what they felt was a more civilized world. Their erstwhile hosts, on the other hand, thought their visitors were returning to an uncivilized and frozen wilderness.