Red River Trails - Significance

Significance

The Red River Trails are less well known today than many other pioneer trails and trade routes in North America, and do not occupy as large a place in folklore as the great western trails in the United States and the fur-trading canoe routes of Canada. They were neither fought over nor the locus of battles (with the exception of the Dakota War of 1862), and although hazardous at times, other trails presented greater dangers. It may be that this relative lack of attention is due to the fact they did not lead to annexation of any territory to either of the nations in which the trails were located.

The trails nevertheless were instrumental in the development of central North America. Traffic over the West Plains Trail sustained the Selkirk Settlement in its early years. The trails also gave settlers of that colony and their Métis neighbours a route for migration as well as a highway for trade that was not dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company. As usage grew, old fur trading posts became settlements and new communities were established along the cart routes. The trails pioneered by the fur brigades accelerated development of Minnesota and North Dakota, and facilitated settlement of the Canadian northwest.

The trails had profound political effects during a time of Anglo-American tension. Both Britain and the U.S. were concerned about each other’s cross-border influences. Born out of commercial needs and located by the dictates of geography, the trails helped create and contribute to these international influences and the tensions which resulted. The United States sent military expeditions along the route of the trails to assert national interests in the face of the continued British presence in the northwestern fur posts on soil which the U.S. claimed. The Americans were also concerned about the establishment of Lord Selkirk’s colony as well as British claims to the Red River Valley. Finally the U.S. wanted to curtail Britain’s attempts to get access to the Mississippi, access implicit in the Treaty of Paris ending the American War of Independence, and which Britain sought into the nineteenth century. The United States' assertion of dominion over its new territories parried and reversed the British domination of the fur trade in the upper Mississippi valley, which had continued for decades after the Revolutionary War settlement which had assigned those territories to the new nation.

Later, the economic dependence of the Selkirk Settlement and the Canadian northwest on the Red River trade routes to U.S. markets came to pose a threat to British and Canadian control of their territory. At a time when a sense of Canadian nationality was tenuous in the northwest, that region relied on the Red River Trails and its successor steamboat and rail lines as an outlet for its products and a source of supplies. An active Manifest Destiny faction in Minnesota sought to exploit these commercial ties as a means of acquiring northwestern Canada for the United States. This pressure prompted Canada to take over the Hudson's Bay Company territory in return for monetary and land compensation. It contributed to Canadian Confederation and the establishment of Manitoba. It also led to the decision that there should be an all-Canada route for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Not until completion of that line in 1885 did Manitoba and the northwest finally have reliable and efficient access to eastern Canada by a route located entirely on Canadian soil.

Today, the international border is firmly established and peaceful; there is a greater sense of Canadian nationality, and fears of U.S. Manifest Destiny have all but disappeared. Canada and the U.S. have formalized their trading partnership with the North American Free Trade Agreement, leading to increased trade between the two nations. This trade now coursing up and down the valleys of the Red and Mississippi rivers more than fulfils Lord Selkirk's predictions made nearly two centuries ago; while he first sought access over U.S. territory for the succour of his nascent colony, now commerce in manufactures and commodities goes in both directions. The trade corridor once occupied by the long-gone Red River Trails continues to be employed for its historic purposes.