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Updated: October 8, 2025
Through him Methodism came forward as the supporter of the British connection in the Metcalfe troubles, as through him it may claim some of the glory of organizing an adequate system of provincial education. But, after all, the noblest work of the sect was done in informal and irregular fashion. They were the pioneers and coureurs du bois of the British province in the religious world.
Not all paths have evolved into railroads, but the railroads have followed practically all of these natural paths paths of the coureurs de bois, instinctively searching for mountain passes, the low portages from valley to valley, the shortest ways and the easiest grades.
Greysolon Du Lhut, leader of coureurs de bois, was too important to be thus set aside. He was now as usual in the wilderness of the north, the roving chief of a half savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting, and laboring with persistent hardihood to foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay.
The coureurs de bois and other fur traders formed an important link between the savage and the civilized life of the country. Apart from furs the trade of Canada was contemptibly small in the eyes of men like the London merchants.
Therefore any account of pioneer Frenchmen should include a sketch of the coureurs de bois. To illustrate this type, one is here taken as an example who was born in France, and who was a gentleman by birth and education, but whose insatiable love of adventure led him to take up the coureur's life, with all its vicissitudes.
He was to rebuild the defences of Acadia, to resist the encroachments of the English, to suppress the lawless trade of the Coureurs de bois, to deal kindly and honestly with the savages, taking care to promote their conversion to the Christian faith, and to restore to the crown all seigniories and granted lands that had not been occupied or improved.
Though they had seized the armed vessel at once and transferred to the hold the entire loot of the fort, furs, silks, supplies, gold, it would be two weeks before the ice would leave the port. Meanwhile the two hundred defeated Cossacks had retreated to a hill, and sent coureurs scurrying for help to the other forts of Kamchatka.
It was a curious scene when a party of coureurs de bois returned from their rovings. Montreal was their harboring place, and they conducted themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off after a long voyage. As long as their beaver-skins lasted, they set no bounds to their riot. Every house in the place, we are told, was turned into a drinking-shop.
Presently the others rise, but Iberville remains an instant longer, as if loth to leave. The priest whispers to him: "Be strong, be just, be merciful." The young man lifts his eyes to the priest's: "I will be just, abbe!" Then the priest makes the sacred gesture over him. The English colonies never had a race of woodsmen like the coureurs du bois of New France.
More and more the young men of Canada continued to visit the savages at their villages. By 1660 the coureurs de bois formed a distinct class, who, despite the laws against it, pushed from Michillimackinac into the wilderness. Wisconsin was a favorite resort of these adventurers. By the time of the arrival of the Jesuits they had made themselves entirely at home upon our lakes.
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