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Updated: October 8, 2025
Thus in the eyes of both Church and State the coureur de bois was a mauvais sujet, and the offence of taking to the forest without a licence became punishable by death or the galleys. Though Frontenac was not the author of this severe measure, duty required him to enforce it. Perrot was a friend and defender of the coureurs de bois, whom he used as employees in the collection of peltries.
The coureurs de bois were generally men of reckless courage, ready to face danger and hardship. From long living among the savages they themselves became in time half savage. Some of them took Indian wives and were adopted into the tribes.
These, despite the mill pallor, retained in their faces, in their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their ancestors, the coureurs des bois, but the children spoke English, and the young men, as they played baseball in the street or in the corner lots might be heard shouting out derisively the cry of the section hands so familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you beggars you, doff!"
It was the early summer. The snow had shrunk from the ardent sun, and had swilled away to the gulf, leaving the tender grass showing. The moss on the rocks had changed from brown to green, and the vagrant birds had fluttered back from the south. The winter's furs had been carried away in the early spring to the Company's post, by a detachment of coureurs de bois. There was little left to do.
Denonville entertained the same purpose, in order to exclude the English; and he watched eagerly the moment to execute it. A rumor of the scheme was brought to Dongan by one of the French coureurs de bois, who often deserted to Albany, where they were welcomed and encouraged. The English governor was exceedingly wroth. He had written before in French out of complaisance.
Indians, priests, cavaliers, coureurs de bois, all vanished. Fanny would stand a moment, blinking stupidly. The next moment she was running as fleetly as the best of the boys in savage pursuit of one of her companions in the tag game. She was a strange mixture of tomboy and bookworm, which was a mercifully kind arrangement for both body and mind.
The wigwams of the different tribes and clans and families were grouped apart, scattered along all the narrow shore back of the great hill, and over the Convent gardens; and among these stalked the native French, clad in coarse cloth of blue, with gaudy belt and buckskins, and cap of fur and moccasins of hide, mingling fraternally with their tufted and bepainted visitors, as well as with those rangers, both envied and hated, the savage coureurs de bois of the far Northern fur trade; men bearded, silent, stern, clad in breech-clout and leggings like any savage, as silent, as stoical, as hardy on the trail as on the narrow thwart of the canoe.
"Maybee," said Achille cheerfully, "you stan' some show not moche eef he sen' you out pret' queeck. Does small perdrix is yonge, an' dose duck. Maybee you is catch dem, maybee you is keel dem wit' bow an' arrow. Dat's not beeg chance. You mus' geev dose coureurs de bois de sleep w'en you arrive. Voil
From 1658 to 1660 Radisson and Groseilliers wandered among the tribes and brought the first canoe loads of furs to Canada from the far West. Then along with the missionaries, Hennepin and Marquette, came the coureurs des bois, Nicholas Perrot and Daniel Greyloson Duluth. It is unnecessary to recite in detail the exploits of these Frenchmen and their successors.
Then he insisted upon getting on his feet, that they might make their way to the governor's house. Stanchly he struggled on, his weight upon Perrot, till presently he leaned a hand also on Jessica's shoulder- she had insisted. On the way, Perrot told how it was he chanced to be there. A band of coureurs du bois, bound for Quebec, had come upon old Le Moyne and himself in the woods.
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