Fort Union Trading Post existed upon the northern Great Plains for nearly forty years and was a very important fur trade post on the Upper Missouri River. Here, the Northern Plains Tribes exchanged buffalo robes and other furs for a variety of goods from around the world, including cloth, guns, blankets, and beads.

The trading post served as a place of peaceful coexistence with the indigenous people and the post traded about one hundred thousand dollars of merchandise for over 25,000 buffalo robes every year of its operation.

Located near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, this fort is neither a government nor a military installation but a privately owned commercial company established to operate a trading business intended to acquire the furs, hides and pelts made available by the northern plains indigenous people.

These indigenous people of the northern plains included: Assiniboine, Plains Cree, Blackfeet, Plains Chippewa, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara who would come to this trading post to receive manufactured materials including such items as: calico cloth, guns and ammunition, clothing, pipes, beads, and cooking ware.

Obal, together with his sons departed from Joktan in the lowland lakes region of what is now Canada. From his departure, Obal was to move to the southeast and settle along the shore of Lake Superior. Along his path to where he eventually made his homeland, several of his sons departed him to find there own homelands.

These homelands of the sons of Obal came to become the many nations and tribes of the northern Great Plains as well as the Interior Lowlands regions of North America.

It is definitely summer here on the high plains. I continue my northwest trek towards Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site.

Once I arrive in the parking lot, I walk up the bluff to the front gate and upon entering I immediately come to the trader′s office where I take the guided tour.

As my tour continues, I find out that this was never a military fort but a commercial trading post located near to the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers and traded European goods to the natives for buffalo robes and other furs.

These furs left Fort Union to make the 1800 miles boat trip to St. Louis, a trade route that dominated the fur trade industry for about forty years until just after the Civil War ended in 1865.