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The Red River ox cart was a large, two-wheeled cart drawn by oxen and made entirely of wood, usually oak. Because nails were unavailable or very expensive in the early west, these carts were held together with animal sinew, most usually obtained from buffalo. The carts were used throughout most of the 19th century in the fur trade and in westward expansion in Canada and the United States, in the area of the Red River of the North.

The Red River Trails on which the carts were used extended from the Red River Colony via fur-trading posts such as Pembina and St. Joseph in the Red River Valley to Mendota and St. Paul, Minnesota. Furs were the usual cargo on the trip to St. Paul, and trade goods and supplies were carried on the trip back to the colony. The carts were noted for the creaking sound they made, with their all-wooden axles.^[1]

The Carlton Trail was also an important route for the carts, running from the Red River Colony in northwest to Fort Carlton and Fort Edmonton in present day Saskatchewan and Alberta, with minor offshoots like the Fort a la Corne Trail. The carts were the primary conveyance in the Canadian west from early settlement until the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway toward the end of the century.

Invented and developed by the Métis and Anglo-Metis peoples, it is sometimes used today as a symbol of Metis nationalism.

Selkirk, Manitoba, has an oversized model of a Red River ox cart, and models may also be found at St. Louis, Duck Lake and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The Clay County, Minnesota Historical Society has a full-scale replica cart.^[2]

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