The Voyageur in the Illinois Country: The Fur Trade's Professional Boatmen in Mid America
- ISBN-10
- 0615628524
- ISBN-13
- 9780615628523
- Category
- Fur trade
- Pages
- 52
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012
- Author
- Margaret Kimball Brown
Description
The French voyageur cuts a dashing figure in our imaginations, so much so we often overlook the reality of his profession: it was a job. Margaret Brown looks at the business end of being a waterman in the remote French settlements of the Illinois Country in the mid-18th century; she presents her picture of the voyageurs' world from the perspective offered by the contracts, debts, and inventories they left behind. But there is still room for danger and adventure, to be sure: hunger, hardship, captivity, escape, and sudden death punctuate their workday-world. This story of the Illinois Country voyageur is gleaned largely from an assemblage of some 7000 unsorted and mostly unpublished French documents and records known collectively as the Kaskaskia Manuscripts. Few people are as familiar with this collection as Dr. Brown, who (along with colleague Lawrie Cena Dean) has worked with this and other caches of French Illinois records for years. The Voyageur in the Illinois Country expands our knowledge of other aspects of life in the French Midwest beyond the fur trade. Three complete inventories of household goods are presented and discussed. We learn a few things about the watercraft in use locally (not the romantic birch bark canoe, incidentally). We also learn that French/Indian relations were not always as cordial as popular history often paints them to have been. Above all, we see a little more of the voyageur than the swashbuckling canoe man of our imaginations.
Get the book
Similar books
-
French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times
By Carl J. EkbergGenevieve , for this document reveals specific occupations in which the journaliers of the Illinois Country may have been employed . " There were large numbers of “ jornaleros ” listed in both of the twin towns of Spanish Illinois ...
-
Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana
By Sophie WhiteSee the cases of Sr. St. Benoit/Mary Ann Davis and Sr. Marie-Joseph/Dorothy Jordan in New France, analyzed in Little, “L'Étrangère.” Esther Wheelwright, a captive of Indians and taken to the convent when still young, rose through the ...
-
French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World: An Elegy
By Bradley G. Bondbefore the departure of the voyageurs or the royal convoy back to New Orleans.” It is more difficult to establish the ... However, the notarial archives indicate a relatively stable group of voyageur-traders in the Illinois Country.
-
Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country
By Robert Michael MorrisseyI am especially grateful to Anna Trumbore Jones, as well as to Carol Gayle, Steve Rosswurm, Dan LeMahieu, Michael Ebner, Dave Park, and Bill Moskoff. I have been incredibly fortunate to wind up among excellent colleagues in the history ...
-
Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770
By David MacDonald“Boucher de Boucherville, Pierre (baptized François-Pierre),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, accessed January 20, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/ bio/boucher_de_boucherville_pierre_3E.html. 2. The journey of the men from Fort ...
-
French Immigrants and Pioneers in the Making of America
By Marie-Pierre Le HirBrown provides detailed information on the voyageurs' activities and contracts based on manuscript sources in The Voyageur in the Illinois Country. See also Ekberg, French Roots, 33, 46–54; and Royot, “Life in the Pays des Illinois at ...
-
Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 1763-1774
By Clarence Edwin CarterGreat Britain and the Illinois Country, 1763-1774
-
The Voyageur
By Grace Lee NutePerhaps no finer picture of the celebration of New Year's Day is afforded than in James McKenzie's amused and tolerant account: “Great preparations going on here this night for ...
-
Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois, 1699-1778
By M. J. Morgan... William Oliver, EightMonths in Illinois; with Information to Emigrants (Newcastle on Tyne: William Andrew Mitchell, 1843), 97, copy available at Edwardsville, Ill., Historical Society and Archives. 30. Kenneth R. Robertson, et al., ...
-
Kaskaskia: The Lost Capital of Illinois
By David MacDonald, Raine WatersThe Voyageur in the Illinois Country: The Fur Trade's Professional Boatman in MidAmerica. St. Louis: Center for French Colonial Studies, 2002. Brown, Margaret Kimball, and Lawrie Cena Dean. The Village of Chartres in Colonial Illinois.