What can an old wooden cart teach us about American ingenuity?

In the Dakota territories in the 1840s, female traders of the Metis people were fed up with low prices offered by the British Hudson's Bay Company, which had a stranglehold on the fur trade.So the women of this mixed Native American-European culture (the men trapped the animals, and the women brought the furs to market) looked for new opportunities. They created wooden carts to haul their furs hundreds of miles to St. Paul to deal with American traders, who offered better prices.