Chapter X: The Coureur Des Bois and the Voyageur

“I have passed the warden cities at the Eastern watergate,
Where the hero and the martyr laid the cornerstone of State,
The habitant, coureurs-des-bois, and hardy voyageur,
Where lives a breed more strong at need to venture or endure.”

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND THE VOYAGEUR.

An island just where the Ottawa River joins the St. Lawrence always suggests to me in its name a Frenchman who, in the days following Champlain, penetrated beyond the Mer Douce (Lake Huron) and was one of the first white men to sail on Lake Superior. This was Perrot,[12] who, like Etienne Brulé with Champlain, was known as a coureur des bois, a runner of the woods, a trader, a guide, a hunter, a woodsman. Without him and his companion, the voyageur, the efforts of priest and noble alike to penetrate the great forests would have been all in vain.

They followed the trails of the deer and other wild animals who were the ancient roadmakers, and took advantage of all the waterways in their light canoes. These journeys were not only full of danger, but were attended by much hardship. In one of the journals of a missionary priest from Quebec to the Huron Indians who lived on the south-eastern shore of Georgian Bay, we read:

“Of two difficulties regularly met with, the first is of rapids
and portages for these abound in every river throughout these
regions. When a person approaches such cataracts, or rapids,
he has to step ashore and carry on his back through forests
or over high, vexatious rocks not only his baggage, but also
the canoe. This is not accomplished without much labour, for
there are portages of one, two, and three leagues, each of
them requiring several journeys if one has ever so small a
number of packages. At some places where the rapids are not
less swift than at the portages, but of easier access, the
Indians, plunging into the water, drag their canoes and conduct
them with their hands with utmost difficulty and danger for
sometimes they are up to their necks in the current, so that
they have to let go their hold upon their canoes and save
themselves as best they can from the rapidity of the water
that snatches the canoe out of their hands and carries it off.
I have computed the number of portages and find that we carried
thirty-five times and dragged at least fifty times. The second
ordinary difficulty is that of food. A person is often obliged
to fast, especially if he happens to lose the places where he
stored away provisions on his down-river course. (Note.—The
familiar word to this day for such a hidden store is ‘cache.’)
Even when he finds them his appetite remains none the less
keen for having regaled himself with their contents, for the
usual repast is only a little corn broken between two stones,
and sometimes simply taken in fresh water, which is insipid
food. Sometimes he has fish, but this is mere chance unless he
happens to pass some tribe from whom he can buy it. Add to this
that a person must sleep upon the bare ground, perhaps on a
hard rock.”

Such was the experience of the missionary, new and hard and very real to him, whom the voyageurs carried on his apostolic way. But the coureurs and the voyageurs were traders and explorers and, as one might infer, they were always young men and in the prime of life, because of the hardship they had to endure in making their long hazardous journeys through trackless forests. Father Tailhan gives a graphic description of their life. He says:

“As all Canada is only one vast forest without any roads
they could not travel by land; they make their journeys on
the rivers and the lakes in canoes that ordinarily contain
each three men. These canoes are made of sheets of birch-bark
smoothly stretched over very light and slender ribs of cedar
wood. They are divided into six or seven or eight sections
by light wooden bars which strengthen and hold together the
sides of the canoe.... As an entire canoe cannot be made with
a single sheet of bark the pieces which compose it are sewed
together with the roots of the spruce tree, which are more
flexible and white than the osier, and these seams are coated
with a gum which the savages obtain from the spruce.... The
savages, and especially their women, excel in the art of
making these canoes, but few Frenchmen excel in it.... The
coureurs des bois themselves propel their canoes with small
paddles of hard wood, very light and smooth; the man at the
rear of the canoe guides it, which is the part of their calling
which requires skill. The two other men paddle ahead. A canoe
properly manned can make more than fifteen leagues a day in
still water.... When they meet rapids or waterfalls which
cannot be passed they go ashore and unload the bales.... These,
as well as the canoe, are carried on their backs and shoulders
until they have passed the falls or rapids and find the river
suitable for again embarking on it; and this is called ‘making
portages.’... In such a canoe these three men embark at Quebec
or Montreal to go three hundred, four hundred, and even five
hundred leagues from the colony to procure beaver skins among
savages, whom very often they have never seen.”

As the fur trade was supposed to be a monopoly controlled by the King of France and granted by him to a Trading Company, many of these coureurs were in the service of the company on a commission basis, but there were others who took the risk of disposing of their furs to a greater advantage, and so were known as “free traders.” If one were to make any distinction between the coureurs and the voyageurs he would speak of the former as the hunters and the latter as those who transported the furs by water, but in general there was not a distinct difference except in large trading companies where the work was highly organized.

They were picturesque in their dress and fond of striking colours. A bright cotton shirt, cloth trousers, leather leggings, deer skin moccasins and a small scarlet cloak or capot made up their attire with a wide worsted belt with flowing ends (such as we see worn with the blanket suit of the snowshoers of to-day) a stout knife and a tobacco pouch. Cheerful, careless, heedless of danger and fond of adventure the hardy descendants of the Breton or Norman fishermen sang their chansons, keeping time with their paddles, the quickened notes for the dangerous places, the slower for the easy passage across the placid lake.

One of the greatest of all these coureurs des bois and voyageurs was Nicholas Perrot who, at the age of sixteen, was the companion of the missionary priests on their journeys from Quebec to the Indian tribes, and thus gained for himself not only experience in woodcraft and knowledge of the country, but what was still more important he developed his natural aptitude for languages by close study of the Indian dialects, and thus made himself valuable, not only to himself but to his country. Many other coureurs had had similar opportunities but did not improve these opportunities and so remained mere coureurs des bois, and average ones at that, until the end of their days.

This ambitious youth soon became an independent trader, but without the selfishness that was usually attached to that name. He was a man of some education and certainly of vision. He saw clearly that it was to the interests of New France that there should be united feeling and action among Indians and French against their common enemy, the Iroquois, and this was ever in his mind in the negotiations which at various times took him to the tribes of the Chippewas, the Foxes, the Hurons, the Dakotas, the Iowans, the Mascoutens, the Miamis, the Pottawatomies and the Sioux, as well as the Iroquois.

To him was entrusted by the governor the arrangement and management of the great gathering of the Indian tribes at Sault Ste. Marie where, on the fourteenth of June, 1671, the tribes for a hundred leagues were gathered in a great council that the Deputy Governor might formally take possession of that country in the name of the King of France. In a spectacular manner—that it might impress the Indians by its grandeur—a cross was erected and the arms of France were raised on a great pole and Perrot, doubtless in a loud voice, acting as herald and interpreting to the Indians, proclaimed three times over that “in the name of the Most High, Most Powerful, and Most Redoubtable Monarch, Louis XIV. of name, most Christian King of France and Navarre, we take possession of said place Ste. Marie du Sault, as also of Lake Huron and Superior, the island of Manitoulin, and of all the lands, rivers, lakes and streams contiguous to and adjacent here as well, discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the seas of the North and on the other side by the seas of the South in its whole length and breadth,”—and at the end of each time of reading the proclamation he took up a sod of earth calling out “Vive le Roi,” which was repeated in a great shout by all the people. The demonstration was intended to offset the influence of Radisson and Chouart, who, at Hudsons Bay in the service of the English, were drawing the trade of the Indians beyond Lake Superior.

Perrot was especially useful to Frontenac, the next great governor after Champlain, in that he acted as ambassador to the ever-restless tribes and maintained harmony and peace. He seems to have been a welcome man in every Indian village, and was the best informed man of his time in regard to the affairs of New France. He was in command at Green Bay and over the Mississippi Valley country in the winter of 1685-6, when he discovered the lead mines. In 1699 the King of France closed many of the western posts and Perrot retired and wrote his memoirs, which have proved of such great value to us in giving us knowledge of our own country during the latter half of the seventeenth century. He was a brave, loyal, and devoted man who gave much of his life to the public service and who deserves to be remembered among the heroes of New France.