by Nikki Rajala | May 12, 2025 | Featured
French-Canadian voyageurs had one signature piece of clothing — their colorful wide woven sash. Voyageurs exuded joy and verve. But, working on the lowest rung of workers in the fur trade hierarchy, they had few resources to express that lively style. Their shirts and...
by Nikki Rajala | Aug 1, 2024 | Featured, Voyageur
“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. In “The Voyageur’s Highway,” Grace Lee Nute says that after the annual rendezvous, large...
by Nikki Rajala | Mar 3, 2024 | Featured
Readers have asked for maps of Andre’s travels. To make it easier to locate him, I included a map in Book 3. And because I love maps and perused them extensively while writing “Uncharted Waters,” I’m sharing my favorite sections of those maps, with...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 18, 2020 | Featured
At school programs, girls usually ask, “What about girls in the fur trade—were they ever ‘voyageurs’?” Oui, mademoiselle — but not as paddlers. Nearly all women in the fur trade were Aboriginal, invaluable allies who scraped beaver pelts, dried fish and...
by Nikki Rajala | Jun 10, 2020 | Featured
In growing up, Bigfork’s tiny public library had one shelf of biographies for youth, jacketed in red and yellow, illustrated with black and white drawings. After finishing the life stories of all the women (maybe 7 total), I kept on, reading about men like Lewis...
by Nikki Rajala | Apr 16, 2020 | Featured
It’s a book. Want great info with lots of pix? You can’t go wrong with The Great Northwest Fur Trade: A Material Culture, 1763-1850, by Ryan R. Gale. It’s a fascinating compendium of solid information (like candy for people like me who LOVE fun...
