Page 12 - Fur Trade program Curriculum

children of his old mates, who also married Illinois women and settled in the same
location. Accault died in 1702.

Nicolas Desroches

Nicolas Desroches was the typical coureur des bois for whom the fur trade was but a
prelude to a settled life in the colony. He was 32 years old when his father died in 1684
and by then, he had probably already been in the Pays d'en Haut for some years. He
traveled for two more years, during which he settled the debts of the estate amounting
to 625 livres, a considerable sum at the time.

His brother, who until then had taken over from their late father, married in 1686 and left
the paternal home. Left alone with young children, Nicolas Desroches' mother then
asked him to come and support her. In exchange for his help in maintaining the estate,
she gave him her own half of the communal wealth. Nicolas bought back the other half
from his brothers and sisters. He then abandoned the life of the coureur des bois,
maintained the household, and finally married and founded his own family. He did all
this with the savings he had accumulated in the Pays d'en Haut.

Portages

The continent was immense and nearly all covered in forests. Therefore, the coureurs
des bois and voyageurs had to navigate the lakes and rivers in bark canoes, which were
fragile rafts that could get damaged by hitting the slightest obstacle and capsize at the
smallest false movement.

Two to three months of hardship were required to cover the distance from Montréal to
Michillimakinac. To get there, the voyageurs first traveled the Ottawa and Mattawa
rivers upstream to Lake Nipissing, which they crossed to the river French, which in turn
took them to the north of Georgian Bay, in Lake Huron.

This journey required at least 30 portages. The canoes and cargo were hauled to the
shore. The men then carried them on their backs to the next navigable point, through
sand, shoals and woods and along the rock formations. Sometimes, the men had to
cover a few kilometers on land. In such cases, each man carried two bales weighing up
to 200 pounds, held by a strap around the head.

Portages were made both ways and the weight of cargo was more or less the same,
whether it was comprised of trading goods or the furs that were obtained in exchange.
In the XVIIth century, a canoe could contain 1,000 pounds weight of cargo; that load
was tripled with the introduction of larger canoes after 1715.