Item Description
Howard Sivertson is a life-long Isle Royale and North Shore resident as well as regional historian and artist.
This is a giclee (archival print - done on canvas with archival pigmented inks), stretched and ready to hang, measuring c. 30"w X 20"h.
The following information was provided by Howard Siverston in December, 2003:
I imagine it started as an old Indian trail from before the white men arrived in the late 1600s and early 1700s. It was part of a trail system the local Indians used to travel along the North Shore and inland to Whitefish Lake and to the Boundary Waters, where they fished, trapped and harvested wild rice.
When the Northwest Fur Company built their trading post at Grand Portage, Indians used the trail system to bring in furs and get supplies. In 1804, the Northwest Company abandoned the fort at Grand Portage to avoid paying taxes to the United States and moved the trading post to the mouth of the Kam River and built Fort William, now Thunder Bay. The trail was still used by the Indians from the Grand Portage area to trade with Fort William.
After the 1850s, the trail included frequent trips by Jesuit missionaries, who had missions at both Grand Portage and Fort William. The missionaries at Fort William made frequent trips throughout the year to attend to their flocks in both places. Of course, by 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company had bought out and assimilated the Northwest Fur Company, so by the 1850s the trail became the Hudson's Bay Company Trail.
Most of the travel along the Hudson's Bay Company Trail was in the winter. In summer, travel between Fort William and Grand Portage was more easily accomplished on the water with canoes or mackinaw boats.
By the last half of the nineteenth century, the Hudson's Bay Company Trail from Grand Portage to Fort William became the mail trail, especially when the lake was too unsafe for boat travel, usually in winter during freeze up or during thaw.
There are many descriptions of the hazards that priests encountered during all seasons as they canoed, sailed or snowshoed between Fort William and Grand Portage. Some of the most difficult encounters recorded in their journals were during the cold winter months as they and entourages of voyageur guides and Indian families meandered from shoreline trails to lake ice on the three-day trip, lugging their belongings on toboggans towed by dogs and by packs on their backs.
Item Special Note
Winning bidder may pick up print at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN, or will be responsible for the cost of shipping.
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