The work of the French fur trade involved Indians who hunted fur-bearing animals and prepared skins for trade and French coureurs de bois who traveled throughout the interior of America to encourage the Indians to trade. Little is known about most of the coureurs de bois beyond names which appear in surviving trade records. The literacy rate among them was low and a life of constant struggle and hardship left little time to record impressions. Being a small minority among the Indians with whom they lived and worked, coureurs de bois tended to adopt many Indian habits, much to the dismay of church officials and government administrators. Long periods of absence from the settlements of New France weakened ties to the authority of church and government. And yet it was primarily the existence of these men, who never numbered more than a few hundred at any time, that maintained Indian loyalties and French territorial claims in the interior. These same coureurs de bois were often the first casualties in the frequent wars with the Iroquois in the late seventeenth century. Efforts to exercise government control over the fur trade by licensing parties of coureurs de bois were never completely successful. For more information about the coureurs de bois, see Canada's Visual History, volumes 28, 44 and 48.
Courtesy: Picture Division, Public Archives of Canada (C-5746)
