Old Crow Wing, Minnesota

Old Crow Wing is a ghost town in Fort Ripley Township, Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Crow Wing rivers. Long occupied by the Ojibwe people, for over a century it was also the northernmost European-American settlement on the Mississippi.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Crow Wing was a county seat and one of the major population centers of Minnesota. At its peak it had an estimated 600–700 residents, about half of whom were Ojibwe. The town site, including one restored house, is preserved within Crow Wing State Park.

This area was inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the first encounter with Europeans. At the confluence of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers, the site of the village of Old Crow Wing became a logical meeting place for the Dakota and later Ojibwe of Minnesota.

Old Crow Wing's strategic location also made it attractive to European traders, the first recorded shortly after the close of the French and Indian War in 1763. The first trader of note to spend time at Old Crow Wing was James McGill in the winter of 1771–2, followed by many others. It also seems likely that two British army officers of the 54th Regiment of Foot visited the site in the early autumn of 1789, although the nature of this visit is disputed.

The first European-American settler in Crow Wing was Allan Morrison, who opened a trading post in 1823. Around this time a lucrative, if technically illegal (because of post-War of 1812 restrictions on trading with Canadians) trade developed between Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the Red River Colony in Canada. Many of the fur trappers and traders were Métis, the biracial descendants of Ojibwe women and French, Scots and English men. Because the Ojibwe had a patrilineal system, in which children belonged to the father's clan and took their places in the tribe through it, the children of white fathers had no true place in the tribe. Generally the trappers and their Ojibwe wives lived near the tribe, which would extend protection, but their children had to make their way outside it. Over generations, the Métis have developed as a distinct ethnic group in Canada, with characteristic cultural patterns, and they have won recognition of political status.

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