Carolyn Podruchny - Making the Voyageur World: Travelers And Traders in the North American Fur Trade

Making the Voyageur World

2006

by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Parts of chapter 3 were previously published in a different form as Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments among French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 17801821, in Canadian Historical Review 83, no. 2 (2002): 165 95. Copyright 2002 by the University of Toronto Press. Reprinted by permission of University of Toronto Press Incorporated.

Parts of chapter 3 were also previously published as Dieu, Diable and the Trickster: Voyageur Religious Syncretism in the Pays den haut, 17701821, in Western Oblate Studies 5, Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on the History of the Oblates in Western and Northern Cana-da, edited by Raymond Huel and Gilles Lesage, Winnipeg: Presses Universitaires de Saint-Boniface, 2000, 7592. Reprinted with permission.

Parts of chapter 5 were previously published as Unfair Masters and Rascally Servants? Labour Relations among Bourgeois, Clerks and Voyageurs in the Montral Fur Trade, 17801821, in Labour / Le travail: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 43 (Spring 1999): 4370. Reprinted with permission.

Parts of chapter 9 were previously published as Un homme-libre se construit une identit: Voyage de Joseph Constant au Pas, de 1773 1853, in Cahiers franco-canadienes de lOuest 14, nos. 1 and 2 (2002): 3359. Reprinted with permission.

Set in Quadraat by Kim Essman. Designed by R. W. Boeche. Image on title page

Christine Balderas/ iStockphoto.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Podruchny, Carolyn.

Making the voyageur world : travelers and traders in the North American fur trade / Carolyn Podruchny. p. cm.(France overseas)

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-8790-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8032-8790-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. French-CanadiansNorth AmericaHistory. 2. Fur tradeNorth AmericaHistory. 3. Fur tradeNew FranceHistory. 4. Fur traders North AmericaHistory. 5. Fur tradersNew FranceHistory. 6. MtisNorth AmericaHistory. 7. Indians of North AmericaHistory.

8. North AmericaDescription and travel. 9. Saint Lawrence River ValleyDescription and travel. 10. Frontier and pioneer lifeNorth America.

I. Title. II. Series.

e49.2.f85p63 2006 970 ' .004114dc22

2006013379

Contents

List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables vii Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Note on Sources xix

Abbreviations xxi 1. Introduction

Sons of the Farm, the Trade, and the Wilderness

2. Leaving Home

Family and Livelihood in French Canada and Beyond

3. Rites of Passage and Ritual Moments Voyageur Cosmology 52

4. It Is the Paddle That Brings Us Voyageurs Working in Canoes 86

5. The Theater of Hegemony Masters, Clerks, and Servants 134

6. Rendezvous

Parties, Tricks, and Friendships 165

7. En Drouine

Life at Interior Fur Trade Posts 201

8. Tender Ties, Fluid Monogamy, and Trading Sex Voyageurs and Aboriginal Women 247

1 18

9. Disengagement

Going Home and Going Free 287

10. Conclusion

Carrying the World 302

Notes 309 Bibliography 371 Index 399

Illustrations, Maps, and Tables

Illustrations

1. Canoe cup viii

2. Engagement for Joseph Defont 37 3. Ex voto of the Three Castaways 56

4. Chanson du Nord 92

5. Canot du matre 105

6. Canot du nord 109

7. Portaging 125

8. The Four Stages of Cruelty 188

9. Fort William N.W. 202

Maps

1. The voyageurs in North America xxii 2. Routes of the pork eaters 96

3. Routes of the northmen 98

Tables

1. Numbers of Voyageurs Working in the Trade 5 2. Annual Wages of Voyageurs 41

3. Crews Traveling Inland from Fort William 107 4. Composition of Posts in the Northwest Interior 208 5.HousingArrangementsatFortVermilion,1809 211 6. Women at Fur Trade Posts 273

7. Voyageurs Wives at Fur Trade Posts 274

8. Alexander Henry the Youngers 1805 Census of the Northwest 275

viii | preface

Fig. 1. Canoe cup, Great Lakes region, ca. 17751825. Private collection. Courtesy of the Donald Ellis Gallery, Dundas, Ontario.

Preface

The voyageurs canoe cup shown in figure 1 represents a fascinating nexus of values held by French Canadian voyageurs who worked in the fur trade as paddlers and laborers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Voyageurs carried cups, secured with string to their belts or sashes, to easily quench their thirst during their arduous trips along rivers, streams, portages, and lakes. Carved out of wood into the shape of a turtle shell with the name Pierre Anthoine engraved on the bottom, this particular cup shows how voyageurs identities blended influences of their French Canadian homes in the St. Lawrence valley with Aboriginal worlds they encountered in the con- tinental interior. The turtle shell is a common symbol of the earth among Algonquian-speakers and Iroquoian-speakers. Many origin stories speak of one or more people falling from the sky onto the back of a turtle in a pri- mordial sea, and various animals diving to the bottom of the sea for soil to place on the turtles back to create land. A naked man, serving as the cup handle, appears to be holding up the land or earth. This symbol is reminiscent of the famous Greek tale of Atlas, Titan leader and ancestor of the Trojans, condemned by Zeus to hold up the heavens. Although trapped in pressing servitude, Atlas is a symbol of male strength and recognized as the god of daring thoughts. The naked figure may also represent the idea that voyageurs had to lug the world around with them while they worked as porters in the fur trade. What looks like a wild boar is engraved above the name on the bottom of the cup. Boars were indigenous to the forests and grasslands of Europe and the Mediterranean countries and were the ancestors of domesticated pigs. In medieval and early modern Europe, wild boars were hunted both for their meat, considered a delicacy, and to mitigate the

x | preface

damage they cause to crops and forests. In Greek, Roman, and Celtic tra- ditions, a boar represented power, ferocity, and strength. One of the twelve labors of Hercules was hunting a wild boar. The boar was a common charge in both English and French heraldry. Although pigs were brought to North America by the earliest colonists, wild boars did not become widespread there until the late nineteenth century. It is likely that the carved boar on the canoe cup represented a heraldic charge brought to the St. Lawrence valley by a French settler. Even if the cups carver did not belong to the fam- ily with the crest, he may have borrowed the image to convey his prowess in hunting. The centrality of the boar on the cup reflects the importance of food to voyageurs, whose occupation demanded intense physical labor. The carver of this cup seemingly felt free to draw widely on symbolic vocab- ularies from European and Aboriginal traditions, even if he was unaware of the full extent of their connections and meanings. The message embedded in the unique design of this canoe cup suggests that although Pierre-Anthoine felt the burden of his indentured servitude while serving in the trade, he was proud of his occupation, which required strength and bravery. This book explores the complex and varied values, like those reflected in the canoe cup, that developed among French Canadian voyageurs, who formed a mainstay of labor in the fur trade, a major European-based economy in early North America.

My interest in voyageurs began with a desire to contribute to the history of plebeian peoples who did not leave a documentary record yet who had a significant impact on the social and cultural landscape of early North Amer- ica. French Canadian voyageurs traveled vast distances over the continent and left a significant legacy. French was one of the main languages among Europeans and European Americans in the Montreal fur trade until the mid-nineteenth century, and its presence today is reflected in placenames across the continent. Many voyageurs formed kinship ties with Aboriginal people and settled in the Northwest to raise their families. A large portion of mtis people had French ancestry. Dozens of Francophone communities exist in northwestern North America today, and a large part of these descended from fur trade families. Today voyageurs are highly visible as colorful cari-