Making the Voyageur World
Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade

French Canadian workers who paddled canoes, transported goods, and staffed the interior posts of the northern North American fur trade became popularly known as voyageurs. This title reveals the contours of voyageurs' lives, world views, and values.

Carolyn Podruchny is an assistant professor of history at York University in Toronto and the secretary-treasurer of the American Society for Ethnohistory. She coedited the volume De-Centering the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700.

1. Introduction: Sons of the Farm, the Trade, and the Wilderness
2. Leaving Home: Family and Livelihood in French Canada and Beyond
3. Rites of Passage: Voyageur Cosmology
4. It is the Paddle That Brings Us: Voyageurs Working in Canoes
5. The Theater of Hegemony: Masters, Clerks, and Servants
6. Rendezvous: Parties, Tricks, and Friendships
7. En Derouine: Life at Interior Fur Trade Posts
8. Tender Ties, Fluid Monogramy, and Trading Sex: Voyageurs and Aboriginal Women
9. Disengagement: Going Home and Going Free
10. Conclusion: Carrying the World