Northwest Company Fur Post – A Step Back In Time

Located along the Snake River, one and a half miles west of present-day Pine City in northern Minnesota, sits a recreated 1804 wintering fur post of the Northwest Company. During the early 1800s, the Northwest Company was expanding its number of fur posts to keep ahead of its competition, the XY Company. Both were in fierce competition to acquire trapped furs from the local Native American Ojibwe tribes.

The man selected by the company to operate the fur post was John Sayer – a wintering partner of the Company. Sayer left Fort St. Louis (near modern day Superior, WI) in the fall of 1804 with eight voyageurs. Paddling down the Brule River, portaging over land to the St. Croix River then down river and finally up the Snake River, the eight èngages and Sayer reached Cross Lake.

Cross Lake was Sayer’s original choice for the post, but after conferring with local Ojibwe leaders, he decided to move it two miles up river. By the time they arrived at the new location, it was late in the fall and their focus was building a post in earnest before winter set in.

Six weeks later the post was completed. While the voyageurs were building the post, Sayer was busily trading with the Ojibwe for surplus wild rice and selling items to trappers on credit – credits to be paid back to the company in the spring with furs.

Today, the post is re-created down to the minute detail looking like the original 1804 post, but to go back in time, we must first go forward through the new Visitor Center.

The Visitor Center, gift shop and exhibits opened in 2003. Inside, a 30-foot tall stone fireplace and a 24-foot birch canoe are centerpieces of the 10,400-square-foot building.

Once inside the exhibit room, we explore the exhibits showing the global economy of the fur trade back then, the work lives of those involved and the cross-cultural communication between the Ojibwe and fur traders required to establish and carryon the business of acquiring furs. Now having a better understanding of the fur trade business, we move outside and start down the trail toward the post. After a short walk, a large fence made from wooden poles comes into view. We enter through the two open large wooden gates.

Once inside the post, the prominent building is the reconstructed six-room rowhouse, measuring 77 feet long by 18 feet wide. We learn from one of the period-costumed re-enactors that the wooden fence surrounding the rowhouse is a palisade - a wall created from upright poles stuck in the ground, measuring 100 feet by 61 feet, with defensive bastions in the north and south corners.

The rowhouse is divided into five sections. Starting at the far end, we enter the doorway to the company store. It is open and we browse through the items in the store and soon start to experience what it was like living at a fur post in the early 1800s. The storekeeper tells us the Ojibwe would trade furs in return for goods such as axes, beads, iron tools, kettles, wool blankets and other supplies they needed.


The next section is the office. It is here where Sayer worked and kept the post’s books for the company. Lying on the desk are the simple tools of his trade from that era – a quill pen, ink-well and a bound book used to record the transactions.

The remaining three areas are divided into two sleeping quarters and one living area. Each sleeping quarter has multiple beds stacked bunk-bed style and a small fireplace. Clothes are hung on the wall. The living/eating area is a room containing a hewn table with benches around it and a larger fireplace used for cooking. Re-enactors go about carrying out the daily duties of that era by keeping the post operating, preparing hides for use and shipment, preparing meals and blacksmithing.

Outside the palisade, a small group of Ojibwe has an tepee encampment set up where they go about the daily work of scraping, stretching and drying furs in preparation for trade with the post.

As I walk back toward the Visitor Center, smelling the wood smoke, hearing the crackling of the fire and listening to sound of the activity happening, both in the Ojibwe camp and the post, it is easy for my mind to step back in time and suddenly, for an instant, I’m there – in 1804.

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Don't Be In The Dark About Light

Part of creating a digital photograph is being aware of how a scene is lit. Creating the same photograph under different lighting conditions evokes different emotional responses from the viewer. So, emotional responses are determined in part by the lighting.


Light has three basic characteristics - color, direction and quality. Photographers use these characteristics to set the mood, control the viewer's emotional response, reveal the subject's shape, texture, form, detail, and reveal the colors of the scene as either vibrant or subdued.

Color of light. The temperature of the light, measured in Kelvin degrees, determines the color of light. It can range from 10,000 degrees K before sunrise to as low as 3,200 degrees K at sunset. So, the time of day determines the color of the light. Starting with the time before sunrise, the color of the light will give your images a blue, cold feeling. Depending on what you are trying to convey, this can be desirable or undesirable.


As soon as the sun comes over the horizon and up to about 1-½ hours after sunrise, the scene will take on a yellow cast. This is a great time to take photos of landscapes and some types of portraits as the soft light bathes the scene in warmth.

With the sun low, the lighting is very directional thereby skin texture will be very defined - desirable if your subject is a rancher, fisherman or in another profession where the skin is weathered. Not desirable if you are shooting a young woman where you want to minimize the skin imperfections and show her soft silky skin.

As the sun continues to rise during the morning, the sunlight decreases in color temperature and becomes what we consider daylight color, usually around 5,000 degrees K. This is where the daylight white balance setting on digital cameras works the best. However, this is not the prime time to take photos because of the harsh shadows. Look for subjects in the shade or small subjects you can shade using a scrim - a small piece of thin white material stretched over a wood frame.

The next best time of day to shoot, after early morning, is about 1-½ hours before sunset to sunset. The color temperature goes down to about 3,200 degrees and your image takes on warm, yellow-orange cast, which is again good directional light.

Direction of light. Light has three basic directions - front, side and back.

Front lighting, light coming from behind the photographer, brings out the colors in a subject, but this type of lighting can create shadows behind the subject, thereby photographs take on a flat look.

Sidelighting, or crosslighting, is light coming from either side of a subject. Sidelighting is good for bringing out the detail in a subject as the light hits the high points and create shadows in the low points thereby creating texture. This is the type of lighting you see at sunrise and sunset and it is a great light for landscapes, weathered buildings and other subjects where you want to accent the texture and depth.

Backlighting is the sun is shining into the eyes of the photographer. This is good lighting to create silhouettes or a halo light around your subject. If you are shooting a portrait with backlighting, be sure to use fill-flash or bounce some light back into the subject's face using a reflector, otherwise it will be devoid of detail. If you are shooting a translucent subject, this is great light as it reveals the detail by shining through the subject.

Quality of light. Quality of light is defined as the hardness or softness of light. If you are shooting outdoors, it is generally controlled by the weather. Hard light is a bright, direct source of illumination, such as sidelighting, and is good for shooting landscapes or any situation where you want to emphasize texture. This lighting will create bright highlights and deeply defined shadows.


On the other hand, soft light or diffused light as it is sometimes called, is a very even non-directional light. This light results from an overcast day, under open shade or by using a piece of diffusing material between the light source and subject. This light is good for photographing portraits where you want to minimize facial flaws. Because light is a key element in photography, photographers must make conscious decisions when choosing where, when and in what light to shoot a subject.

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