A trading post

A Closer Look

Leading fur trader Alexis Bailley laid out the reasons for creating a trading post on the Cannon River in a letter in 1828. This post was built earlier than the one at Faribault, but some of the reasons for a post in the area remained the same.

The Trading-Store.  Engraving on Paper. From: Hudson Bay / Robert M. Ballantyne. London, 1876, Fourth Edition, page 62. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

“Sir:
…The place I wished to point out to you as a fit place for another [trading post] Location...is about thirty miles beyond the former Village of the ‘Wahk-pay cou tais’ on Cannon River between ninety to a hundred miles to Ft. Snelling. My reason for pointing out this spot, is its vicinity to the Entry [mouth of the river] and enjoying the double advantage of a Level plain for Carts and plenty of Timber for building and fuel, but another more powerful reason... is the greatest number of Indians within my trading district ...take from me supplies in the fall [but] trade their furs [in the spring] with either the Missouri Traders or at Rock Laframboises Establishment...[Such] losses...might easily be prevented by placing House near to their Hunting spots...

The ‘Wahk-pay-cou-tais’ were formerly the most respectable Band of Hunter in all the Sioux, and...made their Village on the Cannon River, but [since]...the war excursions of the Sacques and Foxes, had to abandon it and have ever since been a Roving Band.

...They have expressed a wish to consolidate themselves again on or near their old spot and... the whole band deputed to me last Spring, two of them elders with the wishes of the whole, requesting me to send them a Trader...

It is an object of some importance to the American Fur Company...to arrange the Trade and Traders with some regularity...but it's yet of more importance that the Indians should remain at peace. Nothing in my opinion is better calculated to attain such a result, as placing Traders with them the Year around.”

I have the Honor to be
Alexis Bailley

Alexander Faribault

Beaver
Buffalo
Children
Farming
Faribault's French House
Fur Trade
Making the Town Grow
Request
Site of the Bluffs
Trading Post
Translated

Mary Whipple

Bed Bugs
Divinity Students
Emma and Eva Havens
Emma Willard School
Eva's Death
Hastings to Faribault
Hawaiian Fever
Learning
Letters
Letter of August 25, 1862
Longed to Travel
Mary's Wedding
Muhlenberg
Pets
Sandwich Islands
Soap to Sausages
Some Clothing
Sound of Bells

Taopi

Baptism
Big Woods
Fort Snelling
Ginseng
Injuries
Map
Saving Others
When it Started

Henry Whipple

Back Home
Bad Teeth
Bashaw
Correspondence
East to School
Enmegahbowh
Frozen
Gull Lake
Loved to Fish
Six Children
Time of Crisis
Treatment of Indians
Underwear
Youngest Child