The Coureur de Bois
The center and soul of the economic system in New France was the
traffic in furs. Even before the colony contained more than a
handful of settlers, the profit-making possibilities of this trade
were recognized. It grew rapidly even in the early days, and for
more than a hundred and fifty years furnished New France with its
sinews of war and peace. Beginning on the St. Lawrence, this trade
moved westward along the Great Lakes, until toward the end of the
seventeenth century it passed to the headwaters of the Mississippi.
During the two administrations of Frontenac the fur traffic grew to
large proportions, nor did it show much sign of shrinking for a
generation thereafter. With the ebb-tide of French military power,
however, the trader's hold on these western lands began to relax,
and before the final overthrow of New France it had become greatly
weakened.
In establishing commercial relations with the Indians, the French
voyageur on the St. Lawrence had several marked advantages over his
English and Dutch neighbors. By temperament he was better adapted
than they to be a pioneer of trade. No race was more supple than his
own in conforming its ways to the varied demands of place and time.
When he was among the Indians, the Frenchman tried to act like one
of them, and he soon developed in all the arts of forest life a
skill which rivaled that of the Indian himself. The fascination of
life in the untamed wilderness with its hair-raising experiences,
its romance, its free abandon, appealed more strongly to the French
temperament than to that of any other European race. "Non licet
omnibus adire Corinthum". And the French colonist of the seventeenth
century had the qualities of personal courage and hardihood which
enabled him to enjoy this life to the utmost.
Then there was the Jesuit missionary. He was the first to visit the
Indians in their own abodes, the first to make his home among them,
the first to master their language and to understand their habits of
mind. This sympathetic comprehension gave the Jesuit a great
influence in the councils of the savages. While first of all a
soldier of the Cross, the missionary never forgot, however, that he
was also a sentinel doing outpost duty for his own race. Apostle he
was, but patriot too. Besides, it was to the spiritual interest of
the missionary to keep his flock in contact with the French alone;
for if they became acquainted with the English they would soon come
under the smirch of heresy. To prevent the Indians from engaging in
any commercial dealings with Dutch or English heretics meant
encouraging them to trade exclusively with the French. In this way
the Jesuit became one of the most zealous of helpers in carrying out
the French program for diverting to Montreal the entire fur trade of
the western regions. He was thus not only a pioneer of the faith but
at the same time a pathfinder of commercial empire. It is true, no
doubt, that this service to the trading interests of the colony was
but ill-requited by those whom it benefited most. The trader too
often repaid the missionary in pretty poor coin by bringing the
curse of the liquor traffic to his doors, and by giving denial by
shameless conduct to all the good father's moral teachings. In spite
of such inevitable drawbacks, the Jesuit rendered a great service to
the trading interests of New France, far greater indeed than he ever
claimed or received credit for.
In the struggle for the control of the fur trade geographical
advantages lay with the French. They had two excellent routes from
Montreal directly into the richest beaver lands of the continent.
One of these, by way of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, had the
drawback of an overland portage, but on the other hand the whole
route was reasonably safe from interruption by Iroquois or English
attack. The other route, by way of the upper St. Lawrence and the
lakes, passed Cataraqui, Niagara, and Detroit on the way to
Michilimackinac or to Green Bay. This was an all-water route, save
for the short detour around the falls at Niagara, but it had the
disadvantage of passing, for a long stretch, within easy reach of
Iroquois interference. The French soon realized, however, that this
lake route was the main artery of the colony's fur trade and must be
kept open at any cost. They accordingly entrenched themselves at all
the strategic points along the route. Fort Frontenac at Cataraqui
was built in 1674; the fortified post at Detroit, in 1686; the fort
at Niagara, in 1678; and the establishments at the Sault Ste. Marie
and at Michilimackinac had been constructed even earlier.
But these places only marked the main channels through which the
trade passed. The real sources of the fur supply were in the great
regions now covered by the states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and
Minnesota. As it became increasingly necessary that the French
should gain a firm footing in these territories as well, they
proceeded to establish their outposts without delay. The post at
Baye des Puants (Green Bay) was established before 1685; then in
rapid succession came trading stockades in the very heart of the
beaver lands, Fort St. Antoine, Fort St. Nicholas, Fort St. Croix,
Fort Perrot, Port St. Louis, and several others. No one can study
the map of this western country as it was in 1700 without realizing
what a strangle-hold the French had achieved upon all the vital
arteries of its trade.
The English had no such geographical advantages as the French, nor
did they adequately appreciate the importance of being first upon
the ground. With the exception of the Hudson after 1664, they
controlled no great waterway leading to the interior. And the Hudson
with its tributaries tapped only the territories of the Iroquois
which were denuded of beaver at an early date. These Iroquois might
have rendered great service to the English at Albany by acting as
middlemen in gathering the furs from the West. They tried hard,
indeed, to assume this role, but, as they were practically always at
enmity with the western tribes, they never succeeded in turning this
possibility to their full emolument.
In only one respect were the French at a serious disadvantage. They
could not compete with the English in the matter of prices. The
English trader could give the Indian for his furs two or three times
as much merchandise as the French could offer him. To account for
this commercial discrepancy there were several reasons. The cost of
transportation to and from France was high--approximately twice that
of freighting from London to Boston or New York. Navigation on the
St. Lawrence was dangerous in those days before buoys and beacons
came to mark the shoal waters, and the risk of capture at sea during
the incessant wars with England was considerable. The staples most
used in the Indian trade--utensils, muskets, blankets, and strouds
(a coarse woolen cloth made into shirts)--could be bought more
cheaply in England than in France. Rum could be obtained from the
British West Indies more cheaply than brandy from across the ocean.
Moreover, there were duties on furs shipped from Quebec and on all
goods which came into that post. And, finally, a paternal government
in New France set the scale of prices in such a way as to ensure the
merchants a large profit. It is clear, then, that in fair and open
competition for the Indian trade the French would not have survived
a single season.[1] Their only hope was to keep the English away
from the Indians altogether, and particularly from the Indians of
the fur-bearing regions. This was no easy task, but in general they
managed to do it for nearly a century.
In the collection of "Documents Relating to the Colonial
History of New York" (ix., 408-409) the following comparative
table of prices at Fort Orange (Albany) and at Montreal in
1689 is given:
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The most active and at the same time the most picturesque figure
in the fur-trading system of New France was the "coureur-de-bois".
Without him the trade could neither have been begun nor continued
successfully. Usually a man of good birth, of some military
training, and of more or less education, he was a rover of the
forest by choice and not as an outcast from civilization. Young men
came from France to serve as officers with the colonial garrison, to
hold minor civil posts, to become seigneurial landholders, or merely
to seek adventure. Very few came out with the fixed intention of
engaging in the forest trade; but hundreds fell victims to its
magnetism after they had arrived in New France. The young officer
who grew tired of garrison duty, the young seigneur who found
yeomanry tedious, the young habitant who disliked the daily toil of
the farm--young men of all social ranks, in fact, succumbed to this
lure of the wilderness. "I cannot tell you," wrote one governor,
"how attractive this life is to all our youth. It consists in doing
nothing, caring nothing, following every inclination, and getting
out of the way of all restraint." In any case the ranks of the
voyageurs included those who had the best and most virile blood in
the colony.
Just how many Frenchmen, young and old, were engaged in the lawless
and fascinating life of the forest trader when the fur traffic was
at its height cannot be stated with exactness. But the number must
have been large. The intendant Duchesneau, in 1680, estimated that
more than eight hundred men, out of a colonial population numbering
less than ten thousand, were off in the woods. "There is not a
family of any account," he wrote to the King, "but has sons,
brothers, uncles, and nephews among these "coureurs-de-bois"." This
may be an exaggeration, but from references contained in the
dispatches of various royal officials one may fairly conclude that
Duchesneau's estimate of the number of traders was not far wide of
the mark. And there is other evidence as to the size of this exodus
to the woods. Nicholas Perrot, when he left Montreal for Green Bay
in 1688, took with him one hundred and forty-three voyageurs. (Documents
Relative to the Colonial History of New York, ix., 470.) La
Hontan found "thirty or forty "coureurs-de-bois" at every post in
the Illinois country."(Voyages (ed. Thwaites), ii., 175.)
Among the leaders of the "coureurs-de-bois" several names stand out
prominently. Francois Dauphine de la Foret, Nicholas Perrot, and
Henri de Tonty, the lieutenants of La Salle, Alphonse de Tonty,
Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac, Greysolon Du Lhut and his brother
Greysolon de la Tourette, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart
de Groseilliers, Olivier Morel de la Durantaye, Jean-Paul Le Gardeur
de Repentigny, Louis de la Porte de Louvigny, Louis and Juchereau
Joliet, Pierre LeSueur, Boucher de la Perriere, Jean Pere, Pierre
Jobin, Denis Masse, Nicholas d'Ailleboust de Mantet, Francois
Perthuis, Etienne Brule, Charles Juchereau de St. Denis, Pierre
Moreau "dit" La Toupine, Jean Nicolet--these are only the few who
connected themselves with some striking event which has transmitted
their names to posterity. Many of them have left their imprint upon
the geographical nomenclature of the Middle West. Hundreds of
others, the rank and file of this picturesque array, gained no place
upon the written records, since they took part in no striking
achievement worthy of mention in the dispatches and memoirs of their
day. The "coureur-de-bois" was rarely a chronicler. If the Jesuits
did not deign to pillory him in their "Relations", or if the royal
officials did not single him out for praise in the memorials which
they sent home to France each year, the "coureur-de-bois" might
spend his whole active life in the forest without transmitting his
name or fame to a future generation. And that is what most of them
did. A few of the voyageurs found that one trip to the wilds was
enough and never took to the trade permanently. But the great
majority, once the virus of the free life had entered their veins,
could not forsake the wild woods to the end of their days. The
dangers of the life were great, and the mortality among the traders
was high. "Coureurs de risques" they ought to have been called, as
La Hontan remarks. But taken as a whole they were a vigorous,
adventurous, strong-limbed set of men. It was a genuine compliment
that they paid to the wilderness when they chose to spend year after
year in its embrace.
In their methods of trading the "coureurs-de-bois" were unlike
anything that the world had ever known before. The Hanseatic
merchants of earlier fur-trading days in Northern Europe had
established their forts or factories at Novgorod, at Bergen, and
elsewhere, great "entrepots" stored with merchandise for the
neighboring territories. The traders lived within, and the natives
came to the posts to barter their furs or other raw materials. The
merchants of the East India Company had established their posts in
the Orient and traded with the natives on the same basis. But the
Norman voyageurs of the New World did things quite differently. They
established fortified posts throughout the regions west of the
Lakes, it is true, but they did not make them storehouses, nor did
they bring to them any considerable stock of merchandise. The posts
were for use as the headquarters of the "coureurs-de-bois", and
usually sheltered a small garrison of soldiers during the winter
months; they likewise served as places of defense in the event of
attack and of rendezvous when a trading expedition to Montreal was
being organized. It was not the policy of the French authorities,
nor was it the plan of the "coureurs-de-bois", that any considerable
amount of trading should take place at these western stockades. They
were only the outposts intended to keep the trade running in its
proper channels. In a word, it was the aim of the French to bring
the trade to the colony, not to send the colony overland to the
savages. That is the way Father Carheil phrased it, and he was quite
right. (Carheil to Champigny (August 30, 1702), in R.G. Thwaites,
Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, lxv., 219.)
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