The mosquitoes were glad to see us.
If you remember a few posts back Lotte wrote about her visit to Fort Union, North Dakota during a cold spell in late Winter, 2017. By way of contrast I thought it might be interesting to make a few further comments and share a few images of the visit Garry Rogers and I paid to the fort on June 6, 2018 as part of our travels across the Plains. My summer images of green prairie and leafy trees are a nice contrast to Lotte’s frozen pictures of winter splendor. I haven’t written sooner about this visit because I intended to stop at the fort yet again in the summer of 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it back to Fort Union—my route veered further to the west. I will mention some of the summer 2019 travels in a later post.
Fort Union was not a military fort. It was the headquarters of the Upper Missouri Outfit of the American Fur Company from 1828-1867. Perhaps the most striking thing about the landscape of Fort Union is that it sits on the edge of a low bluff along the meandering lowlands of the Missouri River. During the years the Fort was in use the river channel ran at the foot of the bluff, perhaps only 50 meters from the entrance. Today the channel has drifted several hundred meters south and left a marshland offering a remarkable habitat for wildlife, including swarms of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were glad to see us that day. During my undergraduate years, as part of my minor in zoology, I took a course on the various species of mosquitoes. It did not give me an appreciation for these insects. I have trouble saying anything good about the creatures, except that they are annoyingly resilient and persistent.
With the river to the south, about a mile to the north the rolling uplands take over from the level plain around the fort. It was on this plain that bands of Crow, Cree, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Hidatsa, Lakota, and others came in procession to trade at the fort and to pitch their teepees. Fort employees grazed their horses on this plain and occasionally chased bison. Famous Euro-American visitors at the fort included George Catlin, the painter, who visited in 1832 and went up to the low hills behind the fort to sketch and paint (Catlin 1973). The painter, Karl Bodmer, in the employ of Maximilian, prince of Wied-Neuwied, did the same, including painting several striking portraits of native visitors at the fort. On June 27th, 1833, Prince Maximilian described in his journal the arrival of an Assiniboine contingent of several hundred warriors, women, and children. The warriors sang and fired their guns in the air (Thwaites 1906). When the famous ornithologist, John James Audubon, visited in 1843 he spent several weeks at the fort describing the birds of the region (Harris 1951).