The Chippewa (or Ojibwe) and Fur Trappers

Pembina soon became the center of a vast trade territory whose main object of commerce was furs taken mostly from the Dakota side of the Red River and from western Canada.  When the French, English, and American fur trappers arrived and intermarried with the tribes creating the Metis, they would all meet in Pembina to prepare for buffalo hunts.

Skin that puppy! 

The Chippewa were among the largest groups of Native Americans - First Nations north of Mexico - living half in Canada and half in the U.S.  They were the first to insist on detailed, written treaties with the white man, and they even have the Midewiwin Society as a well-respected keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, history, songs, maps, memories, stories, (and get this!) geometry, and mathematics.  In 1745, they used the guns of Europeans to drive the Dakota Sioux farther south onto the American western plains.  They were known for their skill in making birch bark canoes, using birch bark for their sacred scrolls, cultivating wild rice and creating copper arrowheads for hunting - man AND beast!

By the end of the 1700's, the Ojibwe controlled nearly all of present-day Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and Minnesota areas. They also controlled the entire northern shores of Lake Huron on the Canadian side and all the way west to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota.  (Sounds like these were the guys that would have inhabited the Indian Nation the British wanted to establish as a buffer between Canada and the U.S.)

Trappers were here as early as 1729, and as early as 1738 the French laid claimed to the area now known as Fort Pembina. It wasn't until 1780 that it was considered "inhabited," with the first trading post (Fort Panbian) being built in 1797 by a Frenchman with the Northwest Company. 

John Adams was serving as second president of the United States (1797 - 1801), and the Dakota Territory would not be under United States jurisdiction for several years to come.  The Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon by Thomas Jefferson wasn't until 1803.

The Hudson Bay Company of England built a fort in Pembina in 1803 and occupied it until 1823.
The first permanent settlement began in 1812 by (surprise!) Scottish and Irish settlers.  They either tore down the Frenchman's Fort Panbian or incorporated it into their Fort Daer.

Religion arrived in 1818 in the form of two priests sent by the Bishop of Quebec.  His diocesan boundaries went from the Great Lakes, to the North Pole, to the Pacific Ocean! In 1823, when Pembina was determined to be on U.S. soil, the Englishmen relocated their priests and business to Fort Gary in what is now Winnipeg.  The clergy didn't return until 1848.

Whew!!