“Je suis un homme du nord.”
Not just any paddler could make that boast of being “a man of the north,” or full-fledged voyageur. He had to be baptized by a veteran canoeman.
When new voyageurs reached certain portages, they were baptized “men of the north.”
In “The Voyageur’s Highway,” Grace Lee Nute says that after the annual rendezvous, large numbers of canoemen headed inland to their wintering posts from the border lakes. If the brigade had untrained traders or inexperienced pork-eaters (the pejorative mangeurs de lard, because thus far they’d been fed by the company, not gone hungry with the local tribes), they underwent a baptism. According to Nute, the rite was never omitted.
Baptism absolutely included the bourgeois (the company partner) and the commis (young clerks), though they didn’t usually paddle, having to maintain their higher station. The only ones exempt were winterers (hivernants), who had already spent at least one winter in the region.
The voyageur baptism, moment by moment
Marjorie Wilkins Campbell describes the rite in “The Nor’Westers: The Fight for the Fur Trade.”
“From the moment each newcomer left Grand Portage he heard about the initiation ceremony. Indeed, he had likely heard about it from old hands back in his mother’s kitchen at home.
“By the time the moment arrived he felt like a young Indian about to face the fearful rites of manhood. … It mattered not that a newcomer was important or not. They knelt.
“The oldest guide presided, the man who had made more trips to the pays d’en haut than any other present…. [He] had already taken out his knife. Testing its blade on his thumb, the guide … cut off a sturdy bough and dipped in in a nearby stream. … and sprinkled the newcomers heartily.
“When they were thoroughly drenched, they made the two-fold promise … never to permit another newcomer to pass the Height of land without a similar ceremony. And he swore never to kiss a voyageur’s wife without her consent.”
Were high wines the real object of baptizing newcomers? Maybe, because the bourgeois controlled the amount of liquor given to voyageurs.
A salvo of shots punctuated the ceremony. That’s a fusillade of gunshots, but given the next activity — toasting the newest Northmen with more than a wee dram of adult beverages — perhaps “shots” takes on a double meaning here.
Nute writes that a new “Nor’Wester,” especially a bourgeois or commis, was then expected to treat all hands to “shrub,” or high wine — the real object of the affair.
The justification was that the men had just completed a rigorous portage, and needed refreshment. Alcohol was one of their few pleasures.
‘A feather in your hat’
A voyageur who wintered earned the right to wear a plume in his cap!
With his baptism, a voyageur also proved he’d earned the right to sport a feather in his tuque. Wearing that plume was not for everyday but instead for showing off at the rendezvous and even back home. Not everyone had done something so significant as to wear a feather in his cap.
When they arrived at the next rendezvous (the annual meeting of the financial partners), everyone wanted to look their best—for voyageurs, the cleanest shirts and plumes in their tuques.
In an article in the “Northwest Journal,” Angela Gottfred writes that in 1827, voyageurs were described as “each with a red feather in his hat,” and sometime later, upping the style with “ostrich feathers in their hats…” Both ostrich feathers and red feathers “to go ’round hats” also crop up in fur trade inventory lists and other sources.
Pointe au Baptême
There were several sites for baptisms. In “Fur Trade Canoe Routes of Canada: Then and Now, ” Eric Morse located one on the Ottawa River known as Pointe au Baptême. He says,
“At the upper end of Lac des Alumettes the voyageurs came for the first time on their journey into close contact with the granite of the Precambrian Shield, rising to 500 feet above unfathomable depths which gave this section of the river the name “Rivière creuse” perpetuated today in the town of Deep River. … Near this new narrowing, this change in the river’s character, was a commodious campsite, a long sandy point among pines. Here was the traditional occasion for a voyageur ceremony, “baptising” any novices in the crew, who were then required to “stand” a régal all around.”
Pointe au Baptême is the place where baptisms occurred on the Ottawa River.
That Pointe au Baptême is not far from Des Joachim — and just below the Chalk River Plant of Atomic Energy of Canada. (Ken Ilgunas kept a journal about his “period correct” trip in a birchbark canoe that he and others took in 2007. A second photo in the online journal shows them with cups ready to toast the occasion.*)
Alternatively, Nute says baptisms occurred on the first portage out of Grand Portage, between North and South Lakes.
George Nelson, a 16-year-old who’d signed on for a 5-year term, recalled a régal on the Pigeon River near the western end of the Grand Portage.
Entering the fur trade under Sir Alexander McKenzie with the XY Fur Company, Nelson was drawn to the free and thoughtless way the voyageurs squandered money, the gay and lofty mien and jaunty air: “Their example was infectious, the Stories thrilling, and I was in that period of life remarkable for thoughtlessness & anxious to be engaged in busy life. I was seized with delirium. …”
But Nelson’s régal came with a harsh object lesson:
“One of our brigades … slept as usual at Portage la Perdrix, only a few hundred yards from our Stores at the north end of the Grand portage, where they feasted & got drunk upon the régale that was always given them when they arrived from or departed for their winter quarters. When they arose the next morning, they found thirty Kegs of High Wines (9 gallons each) had all run out! Upon examination, it was found they had been bored with two gimlet holes each. … Rumor gave it that it was Benjamin Frobisher and [blank space] who bored the Kegs, which created excessive bad feeling & led to retaliations.”
Girl Scouts interpret the rite
This is my proof: Je suis une femme du nord!
On my first Girl Scout canoe expedition to Lake Agnes into the Quetico in 1963, our leaders added a bit of historical pizzazz with a baptism. I remember being sprinkled by cedar boughs. However, they freely substituted or eliminated other elements. Instead of high wines, perhaps we drank our usual unsweetened red Kool-Aid. No salvo of gunshots. While the rest is hazy, I’m certain no one mentioned promises about not kissing a voyageur’s wife without permission.
Since we hadn’t crossed a height-of-land or wintered with the tribes, we hadn’t really earned the right to wear a plume. Even so …
“Je suis une femme du nord.”
Final Thoughts
- Book 3, “Uncharted Waters” is available. I’ve posted some fun readers’ comments on Facebook and Instagram! Digital versions also available.
- Start from the beginning with Books 1 and 2 — buy “Waters Like the Sky” or “Treacherous Waters”
- Subscribe to this blog and read posts as they are published!
- Visit me on Facebook or Instagram (@nlnlnraj) for quirky discoveries.
- Book me as a speaker.
- Ask your library, local school, gift shop to buy copies.
- Be a voyageur for an hour — come to a presentation. Or organize one for your community!
Sources:
- “Fur Trade Canoe Routes of Canada: Then and Now” by Eric Morse. Ottawa, Ontario: (publisher not
named, 1968). - “My First Years in the Fur Trade: The Journals of 1802-1803, George Nelson” edited by Laura Peers and Theresa Schenck Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, Minnesota, 2002).
- “The Nor’Westers: The Fight for the Fur Trade” by Marjorie Wilkins Campbell. Fifth House. (Calgary, Alberta, 2002).
- “The Voyageur’s Highway” by Grace Lee Nute. Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, Minnesota, 2002).
- “What Voyageurs Wore: Voyageur Clothing from Head to Toe, 1774-1821” by Angela Gottfred. Northwest Journal, Article I.
* Featured image is of Ken Ilgunas and other paddlers being baptized on their historic 2007 canoe trip over the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers in Canada.
