The city is named after the nearby Lake Winnipeg; the name comes from the Western Cree words for muddy water. The region was a trading centre for Indigenous peoples long before the arrival of Europeans. French traders built the first fort on the site in 1738. A settlement was later founded by the Selkirk settlers of the Red River Colony in 1812, the nucleus of which was incorporated as the City of Winnipeg in 1873. , Winnipeg is the seventh most populated municipality in Canada, with a resident population of about 778,500. Being far inland, the local climate is extremely seasonal even by Canadian standards with average January lows of around and average July highs of .