On the afternoon of June 7, a pair of singing French-American voyageurs will paddle their birchbark canoe ashore at Interstate Park in Wisconsin, portage a short ways, and set up a traditional fur trade camp. The two characters from the 18th century will then spend a few hours demonstrating the skills and culture of the Europeans who criss-crossed this continent two centuries ago in search of valuable beaver and other furs.

June 7-8 is a free weekend at Wisconsin state parks, and visitors are encouraged to come interact with the historical interpreters. The event is sponsored by the Friends of Wisconsin Interstate and Straight Lake State Parks with funding provided by Royal Credit Union.

One of the characters will be played by Dr. Gene Tesdahl, a professor of American history at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. The characters he and his partner, Isaac Walters, will present are based on traders that worked for the North West Company in the 1790s.

“The North West Company had several fur posts on and near the St. Croix,” Tesdahl says. “Interstate Park is right in the thick of that.”

Two of the company’s posts in the St. Croix River region are now operated as historic sites. The North West Company Fur Post on the Snake River near Pine City is managed by the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Forts Folle Avoine site on the Yellow River near Danbury is managed by the Burnett County Historical Society. Other posts in the area have been lost to time.

“Both North West Company and the XY Company, which was a competitor, a company that was founded by disgruntled former employees of the Northwest Company,” had posts at the Danbury site, Tesdahl says. “One kind of interesting thing there is the XY post was built outside the palisade of the North West Company post and they were reconstructed on the original foundations. It was 30 feet from the other post, like the distance from my garage to my house.”

In addition to the trading posts, there were also portages throughout the region that either connected two different rivers or provided passage around rapids and waterfalls. One of the latter type was located near Interstate Park.

“Various falls, including the falls there at Taylor Falls and St. Croix Falls, were sites of portages where you would have to exit your canoe, carry all the goods and furs on a a tump line, a collar over your forehead, and then carry your canoe as well,” Tesdahl says. “There was a prominent portage there, which is part of why there are towns there today.”

As the homeland of the Ojibwe, Dakota, and other Indigenous people, fur traders did not operate in the St. Croix Valley alone. They relied on Native people for furs, guides, wives and families, and much more. Indigenous knowledge and partnership was essential to their survival and success.

Tesdahl says he and Walters seek to present a broad and balanced view of the fur trade, a historical subject he calls “complicated.” The fur companies exploited, swindled, and stole — part of the systematic exploitation at the core of colonization. But there were also important relationships with Native people, particularly seen in the Métis families, which blended French and Native cultures.

“It wasn’t all coercive. It wasn’t all war. There was also collaboration. There was also trade,” Tesdahl says. “That’s part of what I like about studying and sharing about the fur trade is that it was a moment when different groups of Americans, to a certain degree, put aside their differences and collaborated. That’s not to say that the fur trade was not full of coercion, part of settler colonialism, and led to dispossession of land for nations like the Ojibwa. It it was part of all of that.”

French Jesuit priests, unlike English Puritans and other clergy, believed that Indigenous people were people, a radical concept in a racist era. They believed Native people could be baptized and could marry French men. But that’s not to say the French did not harm Native people.

“At the end of the day, I do think that if you call French colonization a kinder, gentler colonialism, it’s still colonialism,” Tesdahl says.

Having participated in such living history demonstrations since he was twelve years old, Tesdahl first met Walters met when they were both working at Grand Portage National Monument in northern Minnesota. Now, as a professor of history, Tesdahl says he has a unique role in the living history community. He works to bridge the gap between academia and amateur reenactors, who he believes share many goals and many prejudices against each other.

“It’s a life goal of mine to show historical reenactors that not all academic historians are snobby ivory tower types and to show academic historians that not all reenactors are hokey fools,” Tesdahl says. “Ultimately I think reenactors and historians and teachers at large are on the same team. They’re both trying to give the public an engaging, informative, and accurate view of the American past.”

For a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, Tesdahl and Walters will use their backgrounds in both research and reenactment to share the fascinating, complicated history of an significant time and industry on and along the St. Croix River.

“We’ll be talking about the fur trade, we will talk about the importance of Native American history and knowledge, and also talk about this earlier period of Wisconsin and Minnesota and American history,” Tesdahl says.