Voyageur’s Blog
Ask a voyageur a question
Here’s a blog to answer your questions, like what was life like during the 1800s in French Canada? Like who could or couldn’t be a voyageur? How big the canoes were? What trade goods they carried? What different furs were worth? What they used for medicine? I’ll answer these and more in the “A Voyageur’s Life” blog. Click on the button below to ask your question or go to the “Contact” section of this site — I’ll find the answers.
‘Devil in Deerskins’ — An early female conservation activist
Read about Gertrude “Anahareo” Bernard, an early Canadian conservationist who adopted a pair of baby beavers as family.
Before the actual fur trading begins
Preceding the actual exchange of furs for trade goods were gift-giving rituals and the securing of provisions for the winter. Only then did traders offer items on credit.
How does an 1831 map help me?
This 1831 map of the Ottawa river shows important detail that voyageurs instinctively knew in order to paddle it.
The night sky from an Ojibwe perspective
Ojibwes view the stars, finding heroes in the animals of their daily lives, not in Greeks and Roman myths.
Beaver pelts: 1 trapper, 1 post, 1 company, 1 year
How aggressively trapped was the North American beaver in the 1700s and 1800s? Here are selected stats, of a single trapper, a fur post and fur companies.
Moccasins: A story on your feet
How many styles of moccasins are there across the US? Hundreds, each adapted to its own unique environment—pine needles, cactus spines, snow, tall grass and more.
No wonder Nikki Rajala writes about voyageurs—her French-Canadian ancestors paddled birch bark canoes on many fur trade brigades. One great-great wintered for 16 years in fur posts west of Lake Superior and threads of family stories infuse this book. On Girl Scout canoe expeditions as a teen, she explored Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park. Nikki loves rendezvous re-enactments, reading fur trade journals, visiting museums, tasting voyageur foods.
