The Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Rat Portage was the northernmost outpost at Lake of the Woods, near present-day Kenora. For generations, it served as the bridge between the traders of the Red River and the Upper Great Lakes.
George L. Huyshe, a solider in Colonel Garnet Wolseley’s 1870 expeditionary force to the Red River, described the post at Rat Portage as:
“a small affair, three log houses roofed with bark and enclosed by a high wooden palisading. The Company maintained thirteen men at this post, but nine of them are employed at small outlying posts in the vicinity.”
One of those men was a well-known and respected Métis trader named George Macpherson.
“Mr. Macpherson, the official in charge, was most civil and obliging. He is a Scotch half-breed, a quiet gentlemanly, elderly man.”
Macpherson was known for being a longstanding regional fur trade leader and overwinterer, who, as Huyshe noted in his writings, had “been for thirteen years buried alive at this post!”
Like many Métis overwinterers (also known as Hivernants in French), Macpherson relied on dog sled teams to carry out his essential winter work. George Huyshe described Macpherson’s team as ‘mangy-looking pariah dogs’—albeit useful and hardworking.
“These dogs are of all sizes and colours, nasty-looking brutes, but very useful. They do all the winter work, galloping for miles over the frozen snow, dragging small sledges.”
Because of persevering Métis overwinterers like George Macpherson, fur trading posts throughout the Métis Homeland could continue operating and thriving.