(majestic music) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) (majestic music continues) - Hello and welcome to "Minnesota & the American Story: 250 Years."

I'm Paul Brown.

This special presentation is part of a collaboration among Minnesota Public Television Association stations across our state.

Together, we're working to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the United States.

250 years after the Revolutionary War, we're taking time to reflect on how that founding struggle for freedom, representation, and identity still shapes who we are as Minnesotans and how Minnesota now shapes the United States.

Though Minnesota wasn't yet a state during the revolution, its story is deeply connected to that era.

The people who came here, the institutions they built, and the ideals they carried westward all trace back to the promises and contradictions born out of America's founding.

We begin in Fergus Falls where members of the Daughters of the American Revolution are ensuring that the legacy of 1776 remains alive and accessible.

- My name is Missy Hermes, and I'm currently the chapter regent, but I also serve on a state committee: I am the DAR Museum Outreach Committee Chair.

I would say that a regent of a local chapter helps to set the agenda for meetings and communicate with the other members what is happening.

Our members don't live all in Fergus Falls; like, my sister is a member of the Fergus Falls chapter, but she lives in Texas.

I was asked to do programs, so I did a lot of the history programs that were at the chapter meetings.

And that's where I got to meet a lot of the members.

- You have been duly elected to the Office of Treasurer of the Fergus Falls chapter, National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution.

(attendees applauding) - Thank you.

You may be seated.

And when I mentioned to them that my grandmother who had lived with us growing up had said that we had an ancestor that had been part of the Revolutionary War, who provided beef to the Army: that is how I became a DAR member.

- My name is Julie Kirscht.

I am the chapter registrar for the Fergus Falls chapter of the DAR.

I helps prospective members research their lineage and become members.

- Our chapter has an America 250 committee, and our chairperson is named Tina Snell.

And Tina suggested that we create a book about each one of our patriots.

And so to tell a little bit about them, who was that person that you're connected to that helped during the Revolutionary War?

Anybody in any place, whether it's Canada, like I mentioned, or Texas or some other location, they will submit a writeup on their patriot, and we'll put it together in a book.

To honor and remember our patriot lineage I think is important, because our patriots and the people who came after them, their lives indirectly shaped our lives just through the generations.

And documenting the lineage, it's a connection to the past, but it's also for future generations.

So that connection is made.

For example, my patriot might be nine generations away from me, but for my granddaughters, my great-granddaughters, and any future women that may be my descendants, it's documented from me to there, that nine generations, something that will make it a little easier for them should they be interested.

And I hope they are.

At every meeting we recite the pledge.

- [All] I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

- The American's Creed, And we go through the preamble to the Constitution, participating in parades.

We have done Vietnam commemorative ceremonies to honor the Vietnam veterans.

We have done cleanup at cemeteries.

Well, the pillars of the DAR would be historic preservation, education, and patriotism.

And everything the DAR does focuses on those areas.

Actually, my first patriot was a French Canadian patriot, and that was most surprising for me.

His name was Michel Richard, and he provided support to the American cause in Canada.

And this is documented.

You have to document your patriot's service.

And so I was able to prove that.

And once that documentation is proven, you can submit the application.

And then it goes to the Washington office, and they have staff genealogists there who will verify everything, every person, name, date, and place on that application to see that it is true.

And then you can become a member.

- The DAR was officially organized in 1890.

And why it was created, well, it's kind of a interesting story.

There was a gentlemen in the country who decided they would start a similar service organization based on people who had a lineage to a patriot of the Revolutionary War.

When women said that is a great idea, we would like to join too, they were shut out.

So four women who are considered our founders of our organization said, "Fine, we'll have our own organization."

So that's how the Daughters of the American Revolution got started.

One of our members, a woman named Maria Migette Brown traced her lineage back to the Revolutionary War.

She was one of those early members of the Minnesota State DAR.

The state regent asked Maria Migette Brown if she could please form a chapter in her hometown of Fergus Falls.

So in 1894, that's when our chapter was organized.

It's a service organization for women who are 18 years of age and older.

And one of the requirements is that you need to be able to trace your lineage back to a patriot of the Revolutionary War, someone who helped in a material way with the Revolutionary War.

So that could be a soldier, it could be someone who signed a document or voted in a meeting.

That is a fascinating aspect of DAR, is finding information about your patriot of the Revolutionary War, what they did, where they lived, what happened to them after the war.

- One of my patriots enlisted at the age of not quite 14 in New York.

He served for about 18 months.

I found this information on his pension application, which was really a fascinating read.

And he talked a lot about his family, his moves, and his service, the battles he fought in, and who he served under.

There was just a wealth of information in that pension application I was really lucky to find.

- So I think it's for anyone interested in genealogy too.

We do a lot of work for veterans, even conservation art, you know, helping new immigrants.

All of these things are part of DAR.

Other things that they did in Fergus Falls, that monument, those were in honor of George Washington's 100th anniversary.

And they had a role in Fergus Falls in changing the name of the street from Bismarck Avenue, which had been a German prince, and getting that name changed to George Washington.

Well, and even I love our city hall that is modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

And so in September, DAR chapters are asked to participate in Constitution Week.

And so we're asked to honor that every year.

And so in Fergus Falls, last year, we invited the American Heritage Girl Troop that is here locally.

And then this year we'll also have the Girl Scouts.

So we read the preamble to the Constitution, and then we rang little bells that we gave the girls.

And that is what happened back when the Constitution was read for the first time, is that all the church bells in that town rang.

And so it's called Bells Across America.

This year we are really excited to be giving an award to the Pelican 4H.

And so this is a group of children, 4Hers, who have been taking very good care of a historic schoolhouse where they meet for their 4H meetings.

Lack of funds is the greatest challenge to historic buildings, but community support, and in this case, the support of the Pelican 4H Club, along with their sweat equity, has kept this unique and cherished building well maintained and useful.

We commend the Pelican 4H Club on their preservation of this uniquely historic community structure.

And we hope that the DAR acknowledges their work with a historic preservation award, which would help encourage others to preserve historic buildings here and elsewhere.

Sincerely, Kathy Elfold.

So the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution approved our nomination for Pelican 4H.

And so I'd like to ask some of the members of Pelican 4H to come on up and accept this certificate.

Congratulations.

(attendees applauding) Good job.

But this schoolhouse, which was built in 1905, has such an amazing history.

And it is in a rural part of the state, of the county, and it would be very easy to just let it fall apart, right?

And yet this group of young people and their adult leaders, and I'm hoping the township board as well see the value in this historic school building.

I didn't, but I was in 4H.

How many of you were in 4H?

There, yeah.

- I graduated.

I graduated from middle school.

I went all eight grades.

- Whereabouts?

- In Southwestern Iowa.

You didn't raise your hand.

- That's right, because I was an inner city Minneapolis girl.

(all laughing) - I appreciate- - No rural schools there.

- Another example of the history of this building connecting it to other parts of Otter Tail County.

And he said too in this letter that some of the bricks have writing on them from students who went to school here.

So see if you can find somebody's graffiti from back in 1911 or 1930, something like that.

And have preserved it, managed to keep it, you know, put a new roof on it, keep it painted.

I know there's talk, they're redoing the foundation for the building.

- Maybe then we could do some fundraising too, you know, maybe go, I would say, that would be something that we should do.

'Cause this is gonna cost, oh yeah, it's gonna cost 10,000 bucks.

And we gotta redo the electrical, and then there'll have to be an entryway to go to the basement.

I'm sure, before my time, that's what they had before they put this on, was just like, you know, the fold-up kind of a entryway.

I suspect that's what they had.

So we'll have to do something very similar to that, or build a little, you know, entry.

That's where they would go.

They'd go into the basement.

But yeah, that was the fox den.

But then the little puppies would run, they would run over there.

'Cause they would just sit here.

They would just sit here.

And then anybody that'd walk by had three, four people.

They would stop by to tell me that there's fox.

I go, "Yeah, I know, there's a whole family of them."

But they were kind of cute.

- That type of effort, which is all volunteer, should be recognized and rewarded.

And that's one thing that our chapter does.

(attendees conversing) You realize that historic preservation is good citizenship, but really it is.

You're preserving that memory, that history, and it's educating other people about that history and memory too.

(wind blowing) - The Daughters of the American Revolution in Fergus Falls remind us that history is not a distant memory; It's something we build on, protect, and pass along.

But the American story is also written on the land itself.

Long before statehood, the prairie was the foundation of life for generations of Indigenous peoples.

Our next segment explores that vast and vital landscape, what it looked like 250 years ago, how native communities lived in harmony with it, and how the prairie continues to shape our understanding of resilience and renewal.

(soft music) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) - So 250 years ago, I often wonder what the prairie looked like that long ago.

And I can only imagine how awesome that was.

I really wish that I could go back and see how that prairie was thriving and, and what different plants were in there.

And, you know, we get a sneak peek of that in some of our remnant prairies that we still have left.

But it would just be so amazing to see on a larger scale.

And especially in areas that are, there's like monocultures of crops, and you see that and you're like, "Oh man, what did this used to be like?"

- It was rolling hills around here.

The native prairie that had bison on it.

It was very beautiful at the time.

- 250 years ago, the Prairie of Minnesota covered 18 million acres in the state, or about a third of the state of Minnesota.

So it was a tremendous portion of our natural ecosystem.

It was just a continuous sea of grasses and wild flowers as far as the eye could see, broken up by prairie pothole wetlands, by rivers, by lakes.

And it's just a very unique ecosystem.

It's not one that really turns heads, but once you walk into it, you recognize that there's a whole lot there.

There's tons of different colors.

Many grasses are actually very showy.

You got your big blue stem that's very purple and blue later in the season.

You have Indian grass that's a beautiful bronze color.

And many of the flowering forbs are anything from bright purples to yellows.

And then there's some that are really muted, that are light green, and they all attract different pollinators and therefore attract a lot of different birds that eat those pollinators and utilize the habitat as well.

- We would find, you know, a lot of different ungulate species.

So those are grazers like elk.

We had pronghorn, we had the bison, we had all these different types of animals using the prairie.

And those are just like the large animals.

People, especially in the plains, they were reliant on that food source that was really nutritious.

You know, we have stories about the glaciers.

And so how long ago was that?

At least 10,000 years ago.

I feel like, for at least 10,000 years, we've been in these spaces utilizing the prairie and making it, you know, an area that's habitable for our people.

So Indigenous people used the prairie in many different ways.

I like to tell people that, you know, plants have uses, right?

And so that's usually food, medicines, or fiber.

And those are all gifts for us, right?

And so kind of like our grocery store, our pharmacy.

(soft music) - Prairies are very disturbance-based ecosystem.

They really need grazing and fire to remain as diverse as possible, meaning, you know, many, many different species in the plant communities; later in the summer was a common time for lightning strikes to cause fire in the prairie.

So there would be this big patchwork of different areas with tall grasses that were growing all season and areas that were recently burned with very little vegetation on the ground.

And this creates a really good patchwork quilt for wildlife that need different resources.

- Indigenous people were managing these areas for thousands of years, right?

And the idea that there's these wild places that were left untouched is kind of a myth.

So you think about National Park systems and how they were set aside because they were so, you know, pristine, or they were considered wilderness areas.

That actually wasn't the case.

Our people used to be in those areas and they used to use different, you know, disturbances like fire to keep them in certain conditions or to keep certain plants growing or to keep certain plants from growing.

And so we had a lot of different, you know, sophisticated techniques we would use to make food forests, a lot of people call 'em, so different nuts, different berries, make traveling easier.

There's so many different ways that we were adapting to the prairie, because it is a harsh environment, right?

And it's really hot in the summer, and it can be really cold in the wintertime.

And so we were just able to live in that system because we understood what we had to do to survive.

I think of my ancestors living on the prairie and the plains, like, I can't imagine being, you know, going through that area in the wintertime.

It must have been really difficult, right?

I think that sometimes, because of colonization, that information has been lost.

- [Liz] Well, when people started colonizing Minnesota Prairie, initially they were looking for farmland.

- Well, the early European settlers, it was tough.

They had to break the sod to farm it.

They had to put up a shelter that was gonna withstand winters like they hadn't experienced before.

There weren't many trees around here, and the winds were howling.

It was a tough life, really tough.

I'm sure glad I didn't have to go through that.

- So many people came to the prairies, they built homes, they started subsistence farming, found that the prairies had very rich soil, which was fantastic for farming.

And that allowed them to grow their farm operations.

In comparison, a lot of Indigenous peoples would really work with the land.

And people who were new to the landscape were often trying to change the landscape to meet sort of their expectations for what it should like.

(soft music) - The prairies changed with Western expansion in land conversion, right?

And so the idea was that settlers usually got some land set aside for them with the premise of them farming.

And so there was a lot of conversion of prairie to farmland.

It was devastating when Western expansion happened for our people, because these spaces, our culture is very place-based.

And so that means we have to have these spaces to perform certain ceremonies.

For example, you can usually find a church or like say a Lutheran church throughout the United States.

That's not the same for our people.

Our people's religion or spirituality is usually connected to the place.

When there was Western expansion, we were displaced from those areas.

And so that was very devastating, because then it was a part of our identities, a part of our culture, a part of our spirituality that was taken away in the span of maybe 50 years.

And that was pretty devastating for, you know, not only the plants, the animals, but for our people too, because we didn't have these areas anymore to go, to harvesting, to, you know, have areas to hunt in, to have areas to perform ceremonies.

And so it was very difficult.

- Well, over time, the prairie became more fragmented.

Farms started to expand as people developed their farming operations and their row-crop operations.

And over time we've seen that a lot of prairie has eventually been tilled up.

So it has been a big transformation over the past couple of centuries.

It's rare at this point in time.

I mean, compared to states like Indiana and Illinois that have just a fraction of a percent of prairie left in their state.

In reference to that, Minnesota's actually pretty lucky that we have about 1% of our native prairie.

And around that we have additional grasslands that just aren't originally native prairie that was untilled.

But native prairie as a definition is prairie that was never farmed, and it still retains the integrity of the original plant community.

So it's still going to have many different grass and wildflower species.

It's still going to provide important resources for pollinators, for birds.

As a whole, the prairie ecosystem is really unique, and it's important for us to respect it and appreciate it and conserve as much of it as possible since it is pretty rare at this point.

In the past, I'd say 50 to 75 years, people really started to appreciate prairie as a rare ecosystem.

And it's been a big focus of the conservation community to try and conserve as much of it as we can in order to maintain the diversity on native prairies that still exists.

And the other half of that coin is that about half of our native prairie is owned by private landowners.

So private landowners are crucial to maintaining our state's native prairie long term.

And many of them utilize their prairies as pasture or as hayfields, and often do a good job of understanding the value of their prairies and managing them well.

- The native had a prairie that we have, little pockets of it that weren't farmable in the early days and only suitable for grazing have been left out here.

But it's just, you know, a 20-acre piece here and an irregular 30-acre piece there.

I thought this is, you know, native prairie, and putting bison back on that is just kind of a neat thing to do.

And the bison do facilitate the reclaiming of the land and putting it back to the way it was.

Bison, with their hoof action, reseed the prairie with the dung that they drop.

It provides nutrients for the soil.

There's just myriad ways where the bison work to restore the prairie.

It's just a whole ecosystem that is developed.

It's nice to go back to that.

Yeah, important to go back to that.

(soft music) - If we lost all of our native prairies, we would lose hundreds of species of insects and birds and other mammals, and it would just be a really tragic loss and something that we're not willing to accept at this point.

So many people are working hard to conserve prairie and do a lot of work to manage it well so that it retains its integrity and will continue to persist in the future despite all of these changing weather conditions.

- Yeah, I think it's important to preserve and sustain prairies today, because it's one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States.

The idea that there's wilderness in there, it's untouched, and we need to leave it alone, hands off, is kind of a outdated approach, really.

Prairies, they need stewardship, and I think that, you know, it's our job too as not just ecologists or as scientists, but as Indigenous people and people that have lived here for thousands of years.

It's our responsibility to make sure that we, you know, sustain that relationship and keep building on it and make sure that these spaces are still around.

- So when you first drive by prairies along the roadside, you often just pass by it and think, "Wow, that looks like a good spot for cattle to graze or for people to go and hay."

But once you get out into a prairie, once you step out of the car and decide to walk right through it, you'll see how many different species grass there are, how many different wildflowers there are.

You'll actually wander through, you'll hear the swish of grasses as you walk.

You'll hear the chirp of birds as they jump around to different grasses as you walk through their home territories.

Prairie is something you really need to walk out and appreciate.

(birds chirping) - The Minnesota Prairie represents continuity, a living thread stretching from pre-colonial times through the present.

It's a reminder that while the Revolutionary War unfolded in the East, profound transformations were also taking place here on this land.

Over time, Indigenous knowledge, immigrant ambition, and the pressures of settlement would collide, changing the landscape forever.

Our journey now moves north to Grand Portage, a place where water, trade, and diplomacy connected worlds.

During the same era that Americans fought for independence, the fur trade was transforming this region into a global crossroads.

(gentle music) - Grand Portage is literally a portage, a place that you carry a canoe and goods from one body of water to another.

In this case, those bodies of water are Gichi-onigamiing, Lake Superior here in the east, and 8 1/2 miles west of me, right through those pine trees, is the Pigeon River, which is the last body of water of the very well-known Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area.

- The Grand Portage Trail itself has been a thoroughfare for thousands of years.

It's best well known for the fur trade period, but we're just starting to kind of scratch the surface as to what was going on thousands of years ago.

- This is still today an Anishinaabe reservation, community, here at Grand Portage.

And the Grand Portage Band are very dynamic people.

They're very welcoming and generous people, and they have been since time out of memory.

(gentle music) - As far as the beginning of the fur trade goes in Grand Portage, it's the Cree that are first here that show the French the route in the 1730s.

A guy by the name of La Verendrye comes through here in 1731, and the French are in this region doing independent trade and so forth up until about the end of what we call the French and Indian War.

1763 is when it becomes official; Britain's gonna take control of Canada.

And we have an independent British period here in Grand Portage, about 20 years before the formation of the North West Company.

And what's happening here at the time is these independent traders, maybe a clerk and a couple of voyagers themselves, coming together and are trading in the interior.

And the idea was to bypass the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company that they have.

And so they would come in to use the Grand Portage, because it gives you access into the heart of North America by way of water travel.

- Canada ceases to be la Nouvelle France by 1763.

The North West Company is founded here at Grand Portage, Minnesota in 1779.

But the American Revolution has already begun.

- Yeah, after the fall of Montreal, and that you have plenty of Brits coming in, especially enterprising, entrepreneurial Brits coming into Montreal and Quebec, looking at, okay, how can we make a buck?

There's this lucrative fur trade that's occurring that the French were doing.

How can we now get into that?

And you have the start then, out of Montreal, a huge business.

And it's probably because of the revolution that this company amalgamated, or all these little companies, especially Simon McTavish, who was the first real big guy running the North West Company, he had all these little companies, and there were all the other companies that were all using this bay and this portage as a means of transportation of goods.

And a bunch of 'em sat down and got together.

They were like, "Okay, there's some craziness happening out here."

And for us to make sure that goods are coming in, because you know, there's blockades, there's war going on, there's all these concerns, because we need to continue this if we want to make money, and it's about making the money, we need to do something to get bigger, get stronger, get more powerful.

- And that's when Simon McTavish, one of the main founders of the North West Company, he saw an opportunity during the American Revolution when the British and these upstart colonists were fighting each other in the East, he saw that as a wonderful time to found the North West Company, not in the heart of Montreal where a lot of fur trading had happened, but deeper into the interior here at this middle point at Grand Portage.

- So by the year 1800, about 80% of the North American fur market would come through Grand Portage.

This was a business about four times the size of the Hudson's Bay Company by that era.

But it all had to do again with using Grand Portage as its main supply hub to get inland about 200 tons of fur a year.

- So a lot of people say that (in foreign language) or voyagers were known kind of as the semi-truck drivers of the 18th century.

They were paid to paddle goods and furs, transport them, carry them, haul them.

But they generally were not paid to trade.

There were traders that the North West Company employed to do that.

There were also clerks, which was kind of like an army of accountants that often came out, didn't always winter over, but most every post there would be at least one facteur, they were called, which was kind of chief accountant of even a small post, so that when trading was being done, it could be verified that the company was profiting appropriately.

- So one of the interesting facets of the fur trade, I guess, was, and I think that the Indigenous communities aren't given enough credit for, was how discerning of customers that they were, and then demanding high-quality goods coming through.

And this is what becomes a hallmark of the North West Company, what separates them from the Hudson's Bay Company, for example, that their journals are replete, going back to the 1750s, with James Isham talking about thin-barrel muskets, or blankets that the Native peoples were burning the weave of to determine how tight that weave is, for how warm it's gonna be.

And so what's happening is the North West Company learns of all this information and says, "Well, we're gonna start giving higher-quality goods, buying items in bulk, because they understood that the Ojibwe or the Cree or anybody they're trading with would go to another post if they didn't offer high-quality items.

- A significant amount of goods traded through the North West Company were cloth, clothing, blankets, and textiles.

So sometimes people think when they think of the fur trade, they might think of brass cooking pots or flintlock muskets or powder or alcohol.

All of those things were traded at that time, but wool cloth, clothing, and blankets was over 75% of what was traded.

- North West Company, the way the money's kind of collected with the business is very much a pyramid, where you've got the top tier, that echelon of company partners, again, mostly the Scottish guys.

And that money is being oftentimes reinvested back into the company, but a lot of these men were independently wealthy on other schemes as well, with timber, fishing, things of that sort.

And where the money is ultimately made is gonna be made through the sale of furs over in Europe, primarily London and Paris.

even the markets over in China.

- From the time you're putting in for inventory to the time that profit is coming off of those furs, you're talking a gap of probably two years or more.

So it was a lot of finagling of funds, and that's why these guys became bigwigs.

And it wasn't something you could just enter into.

There was a substantial amount of investment that needed to be done, and you wouldn't see profit off of that right away.

So this was a complex business.

It was a world, truly a worldwide business.

- Daily life in Grand Portage kind of depends on which lens you're looking through it.

So for the community here in Grand Portage, for the Ojibwe, it all kind of relies around the seasonally abundant resources.

So in the summertime, congregating here on the shores of Lake Superior to harvest fish, berry collecting, this time of year in the fall, it's doing a lot of processing the wild rice.

As winter moves forward, it's a little bit of ice fishing, limited traffic again with the game being gone, But that's when the furs have the thickest value.

So all the furs can be harvested in the winter, and when the springtime comes around, the sap begins to run.

So maple and birch trees were tapped for the sap, rendering it down to syrup and ultimately to sugar, and then re reconvening again back here in Grand Portage in the summertime.

So for the fur traders, the folks that were here that are operating year-round in Grand Portage, what they're gonna be doing is all gearing up for that summer event, the rendezvous.

And that's again just that June to July window.

Everything is sort of focused on that.

So it's maybe establishing food caches in the fall, kind of figuring out what they're gonna be eating for the rest of the year.

It's processing and preparing, you know, any last-minute trade that comes through; it's cutting firewood, it's still operating a fur press.

If stuff had to be brought in, bales could be made up in packages, and then getting ready for that event that's happening every single year when the influx of all the partners and the voyagers come in from those distant outposts.

- So if I was at one of the posts that would've been along the Mississippi River there, or further north in Northern Wisconsin, I am pretty close in terms of where these posts are.

'Cause there were posts all the way up to like Lake Athabasca, far Northwest Canada, or what is today, Canada.

So for me, in Wisconsin, I would've had some time here.

I would've been coming in with my voyagers.

I would've probably gotten here fairly early: my voyagers being winterers, you know, they'd been winter with me all the time.

This is now a vacation time for them.

- The Scottish partners are based out of Montreal, and what they're doing is they're coming to Grand Portage or sending a representative to Grand Portage for the annual business meetings.

Obviously, in the 18th century, we don't have any telephones or emails, so all communication's gonna take place here face to face.

And it was an opportunity to come in to meet with the wintering agents who are the folks in the Northwest that had their finger on the pulse of what the native communities desired.

- I would've been talking about my home district, of what's happening back there, what the natives want, what they don't want.

The goods that came in last year, okay, this cloth was too thin, and the color of red was the wrong shade.

Oh, well, you know, the tobacco was really good.

We need more of that, you know?

And I would be conversing with all the other partners, maybe talking about we need to change the location of where we're trading there.

And everyone's talking about their own home areas.

They're talking about the businesses as a whole.

I would've been doing books.

I would've probably been looking over the, you know, resorting of goods as that was happening to say, "Okay, yep, these are my goods.

These are coming in.

This is what I have.

This is what I need.

- At the end of this grand rendezvous where a lot of them got their annual bonuses, there was great celebration.

But at the end of this gathering, in July or August of every summer, then those Northmen, as they were called, or even our winterers, they would take the trade goods back to interior posts, over 200 posts that the North West Company operated at that time, as far away as near Vancouver, British Columbia.

And then the young men in 36-foot, called Montreal canoes, they would be paddling those back to Montreal, about 1600 miles, taking the furs back there; once at Montreal, those furs would be loaded onto tall ships, taken out the St.

Lawrence River, and then taken to especially Liverpool, London, Brussels, and Paris, where those furs would be sold at fur auction.

And then eventually those would be made into fur felt low-crown top hats, and in an earlier period, into tri-corner hats.

- Yeah, so an average year for the North West Company is approximately about 150,000 beaver that's coming through here.

In total, that's 200 tons of fur every year.

And that's everything from bear to bison on the plains being brought through, to muskrat, otter, mink, marten, anything larger than a chipmunk or red squirrel had some sort of value in the market.

But the real demand was North America's largest rodent, which is the beaver.

And best year the North West Company saw here, it was in 1793: they had over 182,000 pelt of beaver coming through.

And it was all dictated by fashion over in Europe.

By the 1790s, it was the biggest fur company in the world.

Even the Hudson's Bay Company that we know of today, it was, you know, small in comparison to the North West Company in terms of the volume of hides and furs and money that was coming through.

And this was the hub of it.

Grand Portage was the center of the world in terms of the fur trade.

- [Eugene] So here, very famously, during the American Revolution, the Eighth British Infantry traveled from Michilimackinac in what is today Michigan, here to Grand Portage, and occupied the fur depot.

- Yeah, so there's British soldiers here that arrive in 1778, and what their purpose is at Grand Portage isn't exactly perfectly clear.

It was the only presence of the British military in what becomes the state of Minnesota during the American Revolution.

But what they're mostly doing that we understand is enforcing voyager contracts and kind of keeping an eye on the independent British fur traders that were here.

It was said to be a state of lawlessness in that time period before the North West Company formed the following year.

And by 1779, they were needed elsewhere.

What we can understand from what they did was that they worked on the Old Road they called it, which was the name for the Grand Portage.

And so they were functioning like civil engineers.

- It is important to note that during the American Revolution here in the Western Great Lakes, the Anishinaabe were still absolutely in control of this area.

Yes, the North West Company was growing, the British infantry came, but this was still very much Anishinaabewaki at that time, or an Ojibwe world.

- So you have the war, which the war itself and the fears and the problems and all of that certainly are the catalyst for this to become so huge.

It also then, you know, creates that issue of, okay, with the ending of the war, especially with the Americans, these colonials actually winning, it does lead to then, okay, we have to create some kind of a border.

What is the role of the British continuing in North America?

- [Steve] The impact to Grand Portage in this British company is a little bit slow to be formulated.

- These company guys knew that they were basically facing a situation where, okay, the Americans know that there's huge companies here.

It's making tons of money.

They're threatening to tax the heck out of them.

- In 1800 there's a customs collector that shows up from Michilimackinac, and he begins levying a duty on every foreign item that was coming through here.

And so that again includes all the various items from Europe, Asia, and South America.

And they were being taxed at a higher rate than what, you know, maybe what's going around for some other companies.

The North West Company was generally being taxed at about 20% at that.

And so that was a lot of profit margin that was gonna basically go down the drain by sticking here.

By 1802, they hold their last rendezvous in Grand Portage, dismantle everything, build a barge is the thought, take it up north to establish the spot that we now call Fort William.

By 1803, they were operating up there.

So when they had to abandon the post here, it was sort of the beginning of the end for the North West Company.

They'd go on to have a few more good years, but ultimately would end up amalgamating with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 as they faced financial ruin.

- It was truly a worldwide business.

And kind of the cool thing about it too is that it isn't just a world global trade, it's the fashion industry, which kind of is a mind-blowing thing when you think, you know, here we are in the middle of what was, for the European world, nowhere, you know, in the interior of North America, but yet this was the center of a company that was supplying the fashion industry, as well as many other industries for other goods.

But like the main thing were those furs, and especially beaver furs for hats like this one.

It was the fashion industry, ground level.

- At Grand Portage, we see how the Revolutionary War reverberated even at the edge of the continent, reshaping trade, alliances, and the balance of power across the Great Lakes.

It was a moment when commerce and culture intertwined, leaving behind legacies of cooperation, adaptation, and enduring change.

Those same values continue today in communities throughout Minnesota.

In Brainerd, another chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution carries forward the work of remembrance and service.

(soft music) - In our early years, we participated in the Brainerd 4th of July parade.

I was telling the group that we were decorating an old car to be used as a float.

And a little boy walked up, and of course we were all in costume, and he said, asked us who we were, you know?

And someone said the Daughters of the American Revolution.

And he looked at us and he said, "You don't look old enough to be that."

- What happened is you had the Indian Wars before then, and the ancestors at that point, the people felt they shouldn't have to pay for that war.

That was for Britain.

Britain was saying, "You're gonna pay for this."

They were charging them all sorts of taxes for their tea and everything else.

And they says, "Wait a minute, we're not happy with this."

And so that's what they fought for.

They fought for their freedom.

- And they were fighting for freedom.

Taxation without representation was their big motto that they used.

And they felt that England was ruling over them, and they were subservient and had no voice.

It's just important that we realize that.

And we have to be represented.

We cannot have a government to which we are subservient.

We need to have a government in which we are a part of.

- We weren't a state yet, so there was no Minnesota.

And it was kind of like most of your population was out East.

- At that period of time, the men had organized the Sons of the American Revolution, but the women could not belong.

- They wouldn't let women join.

So a year later the women says, "Uh-uh, this isn't right.

We are going to have our own organization."

And we do.

- It's a women's organization based upon a person's relationship to someone who was part of the American Revolution.

- I'm Paula Persons.

I was born in Brainerd, actually I'm fourth generation in Brainerd.

My ancestor was just an ordinary man.

Christopher Hite came from Bedford, Pennsylvania.

My ancestor joined the Revolutionary War, signed up when he was 17 years old.

So he goes and fights.

The only thing that was important about him was he did fight for four months in the elite part of it where they actually would go in and cause problems for the British.

They'd do skirmishes, and then they come back, and that was something that you were picked for, and it was very hard to get in.

And then when he left the war, he was one of, in Bedford, Connecticut, under his person, under his commander, there were 50 that were enlisted at that point: only four made it all the way through the war.

And my ancestor was one of 'em.

(gentle music) - I am Dorace Jeane Goodwin, and I was a charter member, this chapter, 44 years ago, 1977 we were.

That was when we became a chapter.

Well, we'll start with the original James Sutton came to the United States or to America in 1650.

He was in the second North Carolina Regiment, Continental Army, and it was mustered in 1775.

After the war, the family moved to Tennessee.

And then the family moved from Tennessee to Texas.

And in 1946, we were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

And from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we moved here in 1947.

- It was a very prestigious group.

A lot of people from the Brainerd area will remember the names of, there was a Mabel Ann Halt.

Dorace Jeane Goodwin was one of the founding people.

Betty Earhart.

Oh, Lunelle Teslow, Joyce Stensrud, these are names people know.

Lois Henneman, she was, her patriots, the one, Captain Robert Orr that started this.

- The chapter was founded on December 7th, 1977.

And Lois Henneman was our organizing regent.

And her ancestor was Captain Robert Orr.

And so we chose to name our chapter Captain Robert Orr.

- DAR is known for patriotism.

It's known for historic preservation and education.

We want to encourage that here.

If you don't know your history, you are not, you could repeat it.

And so we want to know this, and it's just something that is fascinating to know what some of these patriots did; they were such brave people.

Some of those patriots are women.

They actually supplied food to the troops.

So it's just cool that you can read about that and kids can read about that.

And when you read about it, you get a kid that peaks an interest and maybe they'll become a historian.

We have a contest, essay contest.

We actually had a national winner come from Brainerd, which Bridget Wells in, seven years ago, 2019.

She won about women's suffragette movement.

We send the information to the schools.

It's a different essay question every year.

And the teachers teach from that.

We have Constitution Week where we go into the schools; we give them copies of the Constitution so they know what's going on, so they know their history.

- Regarding historic preservation, in terms of what we've done for the community, we're sitting in the midst of that with this beautiful garden around us.

- With the help of the VFW, Veterans of Foreign War, they have given us money, several times, and then we buy flowers.

It costs us almost $1,000 a year to plant the flowers, to take care of the grounds here, to make it look good.

And then we do graves.

We clean veteran graves.

We've probably cleaned over 700 graves.

And then it helps.

People now were noticing, are taking better care of some of the graves, 'cause they're seeing what we're doing.

We have to honor those who went before us.

- We tend to think that we live in the present, and we tend to think that what we are doing is new and fresh and never before thought of.

And we need to go back to history and see what has happened and see that there are other, that that perhaps the circumstances we are living in have been lived in before.

- And historic preservation, if you don't have some of those symbols, our flag, you know, you can lose it.

And that's not good.

- To be a patriot means to love your country.

- You're fighting for what you feel are your rights.

What you feel is right.

That's what a patriot is to me.

(soft patriotic music) Community service organization.

Already this year, and it's the end of August when we're doing this, over 2,106,000 hours of community service have been done by women.

Our group is only 35 women, but it's amazing.

We do a lot with different veteran organizations, helping children, helping veterans, PTSD, things like that.

And last year we served over 110 meals to Vietnam veterans.

We started that a couple of years ago.

We serve them a meal, and then apple pie and ice cream.

Because, you have to remember, our Vietnam veterans didn't get the homecoming that they should have.

We feel this is important.

I had one woman come to me and she says, "Thank you for doing this.

I could never get my husband to do anything."

And she says, "And the nice thing is I have someone now who I can talk to as a spouse of a Vietnam veteran."

We remember the women.

We were down at the state fair, ran into a woman waiting in line on a bus.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Brainerd."

"Oh, where do you work?"

"Team Challenge."

I says, "Oh, I've helped with that.

Daughters of the American Revolution."

"Oh, they do wonderful things for us."

We're doing gravestones.

Found out we raised some of these, because Civil War, there's some of 'em, they're only four inches up.

So we raised one up, and it was down at Fort Snelling.

"How much do these weigh?"

"250 pounds."

He says, "I knew that was heavy."

(laughs) Two of us are using there, and we're working on it, but we got it up.

And then we sit and we talk about it.

And then it gets out into the community, and then "What are you doing?"

Well, we're doing this and this and we're helping.

I'm collecting money for this.

Do you want to donate?

We're honoring our heritage, what we fought for, what people have fought for in the past.

I was in Brainerd, and I talked to somebody and he says, "Where are you going?"

"Well, I've got a DAR meeting."

"You're part of Daughters of the American Revolution?"

I says, "Yeah, you know about it?"

"Oh sure, that's really big out in Maine."

We have people that come from all over Minnesota to be a member of here, because they could join, there are number of chapters down in Minneapolis.

But we have such a good time here they kind of like us (laughs).

We have members that come down once a month, that come from Deer River, they come from Onamia, they come from Little Falls, they come from Brainerd.

So yes, we kind of do the Brainerd Lakes area, but we've done some stuff over in Garrison, Pine Center.

One of our members lives in Park Rapids.

So she did a nice presentation on the Constitution in Park Rapids.

Are we growing?

Well, you have to prove your heritage if you can join.

But we're getting younger members that say, "This is kind of a fun group.

They're having a good time.

Let's join."

I think it's the people.

We have fun.

We do important things.

Our current president general is Ginnie Storage, and she says illuminate our legacy.

That's what is important to all of us.

And I want people to be proud that we have a chapter here in Brainerd.

We're a good group.

If you want to join, you can come to a meeting, see what you think of us, and hopefully you'll say, "I like this group of women.

Let's do this."

Because we're all age groups from our 20s to our 90s and everything in between.

and there's something for everybody there.

We continue to grow.

We continue to change.

And that's what it's all about.

(bright music) - Across these stories, from family legacies to prairie landscapes, from fur trade roots to civic engagement, the echoes of the American Revolution reach us still.

The ideals fought for 250 years ago continue to evolve here in Minnesota, shaped by those who honor the past and those who look forward to the future.

The Revolutionary War may have ended long ago, but its influence lives on, as does the impact of Minnesota on our national values, our economic leadership, and in our shared pursuit of a more perfect union.

Thank you for joining us from Minnesota and the American story, 250 years.

Through the collaboration of public television stations across our state, we hope this series deepens your understanding of how Minnesota fits into the larger American journey and how the stories born here continue to shape the next 250 years.

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