Initially employed by the British Northwest Fur Company, Godin and his father Thyery were among the Iroquois Indians hired because of skills as trappers, hunters and boatmen.
Antoine Godin was probably born prior to 1810, as he is mentioned in the 1825 journal of Hudson's Bay officer Peter Skene Ogden in the northern Rocky Mountains.
At this time, Thyery Godin had already left his British employer to join American fur trappers at the urging of Johnson Gardner, an associate of William H. Ashley.
Fitzpatrick had been attacked and robbed several weeks earlier by Blackfeet when he had ridden ahead of a pack train to alert the rendezvous of their eminent arrival.
Initially there was no alarm, for this group was assumed to be an American Fur Company supply train led by Lucien Fontenelle, which had failed to arrive in time for the rendezvous.
As the group came closer, it became apparent they were a party of between 150 and 200 Gros Ventre Indians, including women and children, who were moving the location of their village.