A coureur des bois or coureur de bois, runners of the woods; plural: coureurs de bois) was an independent entrepreneurial French-Canadian woodsman who traveled in New France and the interior of North America. They ventured into the woods usually to trade various European items for furs, especially beaver pelts, and along the way, learned the trades and practices of the Native people who inhabited there.
Read more about Coureur Des Bois: The Type of Man, Coureur Des Bois and The Fur Trade, Notable Coureurs Des Bois, Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words coureur, des and/or bois:
“This spirit it was which so early carried the French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river on the south. It was long before our frontiers reached their settlements in the West, and a voyageur or coureur de bois is still our conductor there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.”
—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)
“This spirit it was which so early carried the French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river on the south. It was long before our frontiers reached their settlements in the West, and a voyageur or coureur de bois is still our conductor there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)