Kamanistigouian, as a place, is first mentioned in a decree of the Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle-France dated 23 August 1681 instructing one of two canoes to make known the king's amnesty to coureurs de bois, although the Kaministiquia River is depicted on the 1671 "Carte des Jésuites" as "R. [rivière] par où l'on va aux Assinipoualacs à 120 lieues vers le Nord-Ouest.

The North West Company continued to use Grand Portage as their centre of operations after the area was ceded to the United States after the colonists' victory in the American Revolution.

Following the signing of the Jay Treaty of 1794 between Great Britain and the United States, which acknowledged American control of the area, the North West Company required a new midway transshipment point between their inland posts and Montreal.

In 1803, the Nor'Westers abandoned Grand Portage and established a new fur trading post on the Kaministiquia River on land acquired from the Ojibwe by written agreement 30 July 1798.

Two townships (Neebing and Paipoonge) and the Fort William Town Plot were surveyed in 1859–1860 by the Province of Canada's Department of Crown Lands and opened to settlement.

A large section of land adjacent to the Hudson's Bay Company post remained in dispute until 1875, when it was surveyed as Neebing Additional Township.

Most land was acquired by absentee landowners speculating on the decision of the new Dominion of Canada to build a railway to the Pacific that would begin somewhere along the north shore of Lake Superior.