Crossroads of the Fur Trade

Crossroads of the Fur Trade. . The central location of the Straits of Mackinac on the water highway system and the proximity of numerous Native tribes made it an ideal home base for the Upper Great Lakes fur trade. The Straits of Mackinac functioned as a fur trade summer depot and transshipment center throughout the French and British periods. Every summer, merchants arrived from Montreal with tons of manufactured goods. Traders also came from their winter camps throughout the Great Lakes watershed laden with furs. The merchants returned with the furs to Montreal and the traders bundled up trade goods for the next winter's worth of trading., Captions , Traders, who gathered the furs from the Native Americans in the wilderness, brought their pelts to the Straits of Mackinac in early summer., Also in the early summer, merchants shipped 90-pound bales of trade goods in large 40-foot long canoes from eastern cities to the Straits of Mackinac., While in the straits, traders received a fresh supply of goods for another winter of trading and merchants loaded furs into their canoes for the journey back to the east.