As the desire to reach India by the shortest road first made the civilized world acquainted with the eastern coast of North America, so the extension of the fur-trade has been the chief, or rather the only, motive which originally led the footsteps of the white man from the Canadian Lakes and the borders of Hudson’s Bay into the remote interior of that vast continent.
The first European fur-traders in North America were French Canadians—coureurs des bois—a fitting surname for men habituated to an Indian forest-life. Three or four of these “irregular spirits” agreeing to make an expedition into the backwoods would set out in their birch-bark canoe, laden with goods received on trust from a merchant, for a voyage of great danger and hardship, it might be of several years, into the wilderness.
On their return the merchant who had given them credit of course received the lion’s share of the skins gathered among the Hurons or the Iroquois; the small portion left as a recompense for their own labor was soon spent, as sailors spend their hard-earned wages on their arrival in port; and then they started on some new adventure, until finally old age, infirmities, or death prevented their revisiting the forest.
The modern “voyageur,” who has usurped the place of the old “coureurs,” is so like them in manners and mode of life, that to know the one is to become acquainted with the other. In short, the voyageur is merely a coureur subject to strict law and serving for a fixed pay; while the coureur was a voyageur trading at his own risk and peril, and acknowledging no control when once beyond the pale of European colonization.
The camel is frequently called the “ship of the desert,” and with equal justice the birch-bark canoe might be named the “camel of the North American wilds.” For if we consider the rivers which, covering the land like a net-work, are the only arteries of communication; the frequent rapids and cataracts; the shallow waters flowing over a stony ground whose sharp angles would infallibly cut to pieces any boat made of wood; and finally the surrounding deserts, where, in case of an accident, the traveller is left to his own resources, we must come to the conclusion that in such a country no intercourse could possibly be carried on without a boat made of materials at once flexible and tough, and capable moreover of being easily repaired without the aid of hammer and nails, of saw and plane. This invaluable material is supplied by the rind of the paper-birch, a tree whose uses in the Hudson’s Bay territories are almost as manifold as those of the palm-trees of the tropical zone. Where the skins of animals are rare, the pliant bark, peeled off in large pieces, serves to cover the Indian’s tent. Carefully sewn together, and ornamented with the quills of the porcupine, it is made into baskets, sacks, dishes, plates, and drinking-cups, and in fact is, in one word, the chief material of which the household articles of the Crees are formed. The wood serves for the manufacture of oars, snow-shoes, and sledges; and in spring the sap of the tree furnishes an agreeable beverage, which, by boiling, may be inspissated into a sweet syrup. Beyond the Arctic Circle the paper-birch is a rare and crooked tree, but it is met with as a shrub as far as 69° N. lat. It grows to perfection on the northern shores of Lake Superior, near Fort William, where the canoes of the Hudson’s Bay Company are chiefly manufactured.
A birch-bark canoe is between thirty and forty feet long, and the rinds of which it is built are sewn together with filaments of the root of the Canadian fir. In case of a hole being knocked into it during the journey, it can be patched like an old coat, and is then as good as new. As it has a flat bottom, it does not sink deep into the water; and the river must be almost dried up which could not carry such a boat. The cargo is divided into bales or parcels of from 90 to 100 pounds; and although it frequently amounts to more than four tons, yet the canoe itself is so light that the crew can easily transport it upon their shoulders. This crew generally consists of eight or ten men, two of whom must be experienced boatmen, who receive double pay, and are placed one at the helm, the other at the poop. When the wind is fair, a sail is unfurled, and serves to lighten the toil.
The Canadian voyageur combines the light-heartedness of the Frenchman with the apathy of the Indian, and his dress is also a mixture of that of the Red-skins and of the European colonists. Frequently he is himself a mixture of Gallic and Indian blood—a so-called “bois-brûlé,” and in this case doubly light-hearted and unruly. With his woollen blanket as a surcoat, his shirt of striped cotton, his pantaloons of cloth, or his Indian stockings of leather, his moccasins of deer-skin, and his sash of gaudily-dyed wool, in which his knife, his tobacco-bag, and various other utensils are stuck, he stands high in his own esteem. His language is a French jargon, richly interlarded with Indian and English words—a jumble fit to drive a grammarian mad, but which he thinks so euphonious that his tongue is scarcely ever at rest. His supply of songs and anecdotes is inexhaustible, and he is always ready for a dance. His politeness is exemplary: he never calls his comrades otherwise than “mon frère,” and “mon cousin.” It is hardly necessary to remark that he is able to handle his boat with the same ease as an expert rider manages his horse.
When after a hard day’s work they rest for the night, the axe is immediately at work in the nearest forest, and in less than ten minutes the tent is erected and the kettle simmering on the fire. “While the passengers—perhaps some chief trader on a voyage to some distant fort, or a Back or a Richardson on his way to the Polar Ocean—are warming or drying themselves, the indefatigable “voyageurs” drag the unloaded canoe ashore, turn it over, and examine it carefully, either to fasten again some loose stitches, or to paint over some damaged part with fresh resin. Under the cover of their boat, which they turn against the wind, and with a flaming fire in the foreground, they then bid defiance to the weather. At one o’clock in the morning “Lève! lève! lève!” is called; in half an hour the encampment is broken up, and the boat reladen and launched. At eight in the morning a halt is made for breakfast, for which three-quarters of an hour are allowed. About two in the afternoon half an hour’s rest suffices for a cold dinner. Eighteen hours’ work and six hours’ rest make out the day. The labor is incredible; yet the “voyageur” not only supports it without a murmur, but with the utmost cheerfulness. Such a life requires, of course, an iron constitution. In rowing, the arms and breast of the “voyageur” are exerted to the utmost; and in shallow places he drags the boat after him, wading up to the knees and thighs in the water. Where he is obliged to force his way against a rapid, the drag-rope must be pulled over rocks and stumps of trees, through swamps and thickets; and at the portages the cargo and the boat have to be carried over execrable roads to the next navigable water. Then the “voyageur” takes upon his back two packages, each weighing 90 pounds, and attached by a leathern belt running over the forehead, that his hands may be free to clear the way; and such portages sometimes occur ten or eleven times in one day.
For these toils of his wandering life he has many compensations, in the keen appetite, the genial sensation of muscular strength, and the flow of spirits engendered by labor in the pure and bracing air. Surely many would rather breathe with the “voyageur” the fragrance of the pine forest, or share his rest upon the borders of the stream, than lead the monotonous life of an artisan, pent up in the impure atmosphere of a city.
During the first period of the American fur-trade the “coureurs des bois” used to set out on their adventurous expeditions from the village “La Chine,” one of the oldest and most famous settlements in Canada, whose name points to a time when the St. Lawrence was still supposed to be the nearest way to China. How far some of them may have penetrated into the interior of the continent is unknown; but so much is certain, that their regular expeditions extended as far as the Saskatchewan, 2500 miles beyond the remotest European settlements. Several factories or forts protected their interests on the banks of that noble river; and the French would no doubt have extended their dominion to the Rocky Mountains or to the Pacific if the conquest of Canada by England, in 1761, had not completely revolutionized the fur-trade. The change of dominion laid it prostrate for several years, but our enterprising countrymen soon opened a profitable intercourse with the Indian tribes of the west, as their predecessors had done before them. Now, however, the adventurous “coureur des bois,” who had entered the wilds as a semi-independent trader, was obliged to serve in the pay of the British merchant, and to follow him, as his “voyageur,” deeper and deeper into the wilderness, until finally they reached on the Athabasca and the Churchill River the Indian hunters who used to sell their skins in the settlements of the Hudson’s Bay Company.