The Sauk successfully farmed the area during part of the year and spent the winters in camps down and across the Mississippi collecting fur-bearing animals. Sauk hunters skinned their catches and sold the peltry to fur traders from the Great Lakes. From 1763 on, these traders were mostly British, and from the 1780s on, most of them were employees or contractors of the Canada-based North West Company. In the spring, the Sauk gathered in sugar camps for maple sugaring before returning to the village (left empty since the fall) to plant crops and bury their dead.