Alexander Henry

By Merrill Piepkorn

Published May 21, 2022 at 7:25 AM CDT

3/12/2009:

Pembina is the Chippewa word for highbush cranberry, whose berries lend their flaming color to the woods in autumn. It is also the name of North Dakota's most northeastern town. Pembina is also considered the site of the first trading post in what is now North Dakota, built by Alexander Henry, the younger, for the North West Company. The "younger's" uncle was also named Alexander Henry. He too, was a fur trader and explorer. Both men were copious note takers and left detailed journals of their adventures, which have proved invaluable to historians. The rest of this story concerns Alexander Henry the younger. Oddly enough, in the midst of all this writing, there's nothing about his birth and early life except that many of his relatives were also in the fur trade.

We know Henry began trading with the Ojibwas in 1791, but we don't know much about his career until his first journal entry in the fall of 1799 on the Whitemud River in present day Manitoba. From then on, he kept a detailed account of his life. Henry built the North West Company post on the north side of the Pembina River in 1801 and later that same year the X-Y and Hudson Bay companies opened posts at the mouth of the river. It was a raucous time.

The trading companies brought their rum and it flowed freely during trading sessions. Drinking bouts and brawls were continuous among the natives while the traders justified their practices on the grounds of competition.

This practice of getting his Indian trading partners drunk bothered Alexander Henry, even if it didn't stop him from using the technique himself. His February 25th, 1803 journal entry says, "Now the Indians are totally neglecting all their ancient customs and manners and to what else can this degeneracy be ascribed but to their intercourse with us. If there is a murder among the Soultex it is always in a drinking match, so that we may in truth say that Liquor is the mother of all evil in the North West."

1801 was a big year for Alexander Henry. He built the fort and took an Indian wife...against his will, according to his journal. Returning to his room following New Year's celebrations he found it occupied by the daughter of the Ojibwa chief Liard and Henry reported that "the devil could not get her out!" They stayed together and the best guess is that they eventually had three daughters and a son.

Alexander Henry is duly noted for his accomplishments as an explorer and fur trader, but it was the wife of his personal servant, a black man by the name of Pierre Bonza, who made history at the Pembina trading post on this date, March 12th, 1802 when she gave birth to the first non-native child in what is now North Dakota. Interestingly the child was not European, but rather of African descent!

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