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Updated: June 29, 2025
Here are the head-quarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the house of Sir George Simpson, the Governor; and hence, annually, towards the end of April, proceed the 'maitre-canots, or large canoes, of the company, manned by its officers and hardy 'voyageurs, up the waters of the Ottawa to Lake Nipissing, and down the Riviere des Francais into Lake Huron.
The houses and plantations of the British settlers, and of a few French Canadians, indicated thrift, but the majority of the French half-breeds, or Métis, the descendants of French Canadian fathers and Indian mothers, continued to live almost entirely on the fur trade, as voyageurs, trappers, and hunters.
The chief interest of the great majority of her passengers was commercial; there were American drummers keen to line their pockets with European profits; there were French commis voyageurs who had been selling articles of French manufacture which had formerly been made by the Germans; there were half-official persons who had been on missions to American ammunition works; and there was a diplomat or two.
Angus McDonald and his Indian Family. Canadian Voyageurs. Father Joseph. Hardships of the Early Missionaries. The Coeurs d'Alêne and their Superstitions. The Catholic Ladder. Sisters of Notre Dame. Skill of the Missionaries in instructing the Indians. Father de Smet and the Blackfeet. A Native Dance. Spokanes. Exclusiveness of the Coeurs d'Alêne. Battle of Four Lakes.
They found plenty of fresh provisions, both in the stream itself and on its banks. They caught salmon in the water, and the silver-coloured hyodon, known among the voyageurs by the name of "Doré." They shot both ducks and geese, and roast-duck or goose had become an everyday dinner with them. Of the geese there were several species.
The tables groaned beneath mountains of good things, and in the centre of each, like Mont Blanc rising from the lower Alps, stood a magnificent Easter pie, the confection of which was a masterpiece of the skill of Maitre Guillot Gobet, the head cook of the Bourgeois, who was rather put out, however, when Dame Rochelle decided to bestow all the Easter pies upon the hungry voyageurs, woodmen, and workmen, and banished them from the menu of the more patrician tables set for the guests of the mansion.
But no doubt you know all these things without my telling you of them, and you are impatient to hear not about that, but whether the young voyageurs safely reached the end of their journey. That question I answer briefly at once they did. Some distance below the point where they had struck the Mackenzie, they fell in with a winter encampment of Dog-rib Indians.
Over a hundred voyageurs were sorting furs in the American Fur Company's yard, under the supervision of the clerks. And though it was hard labor, lasting from five in the morning until sunset, they thought lightly of it as fatigue duty after their eleven months of toil and privation in the wilderness.
Spreading mats on the sand, they slept in the drenching rain. Unused to ocean waters, the inland voyageurs became deadly seasick. Once, when all were encamped on the shore, an enormous tidal wave broke over the camp with a smashing of log-drift that almost crushed the boats. Nez Perces and Flatheads had assisted the white men after the Snake guides had turned back.
Franklin and his followers, in two canoes, embarked on the polar sea and traced the course of the coast eastward for five hundred and fifty miles. The sailors were as men restored to their own element. But the Canadian voyageurs were filled with dread at the great waves of the open ocean.
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