At the time of European contact in the 16th century, the dominant tribes were the Assiniboine and the Lakota (or Sioux, as the French colonists called them).

The Ojibwe, also known as Chippewa, a branch of the Anishinaabe-speaking language group, gradually migrated west along both sides of the Great Lakes.

Throughout the Red River of the North area, French trappers married Native American women, and their descendants continued to hunt and trap.

The Ojibwe and Métis generally supported the French forces during the Seven Years' War in the mid-eighteenth century against Great Britain.

With the British defeat of France and takeover of its colonial territory, the Chippewa learned to deal with a new trading culture.

Armed with guns by trading and having adopted the horse from the Mandan and Hidatsa, by the end of the eighteenth century the Chippewa had migrated from woodlands to the Great Plains and begun to push the Lakota west before them.

By the time of the War of 1812, the Ojibwe allied with the British against the United States, hoping to forestall European-American settlers' encroaching on their territory.

With the settlement of the northern boundary with Canada, the Chippewa within the Dakota Territory were forced to deal with the United States.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Chippewa had continued conflicts with the Lakota along the Red River, finally pushing them into present-day western North and South Dakota.

Father George Belcourt, a Catholic Jesuit missionary who served them, described their territory in 1849 as the following We understand here, that the district or department called Pembina, comprises all of the country or basin which is irrigated or traversed by the tributaries of the Red River, south of the line of the 49th parallel of latitude.

The prairies' rivers and lakes which extend to the height of land of the Mississippi, and the immense plains which feed innumerable herds of bison to the westward and from which the Chippewa and half breeds [Métis] of this region obtain their subsistence, contains within their limits a country about 400 miles from north to south and more than five hundred miles from east to west.

[3]The Métis used two-wheeled ox-drawn carts to transport furs to market along the Red River Trails, between what is now Winnipeg, Canada and Mendota or St. Paul, Minnesota.

[11] The terrain slopes to the east and north; its highest point is on the lower western boundary line, at 1,302 feet (397 m) above sea level.