USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Coureurs de bois (koo-wheres duh bwah) means “runners of the woods.” These men went out from French settlements to trade for animal furs with Native Americans. Their travels took them through the land that is now Michigan. Many of them married women from the Native-American tribes.

Detailed explanation-2: -The most important players in the early fur trade were Indigenous peoples and the French. The French gave European goods to Indigenous people in exchange for beaver pelts. The fur trade was the most important industry in New France. With the money they made from furs, the French sent settlers to Canada.

Detailed explanation-3: -The first firms to participate in the fur trade were French, and under French rule the trade spread along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, and down the Mississippi. In the seventeenth century, following the Dutch, the English developed a trade through Albany.

Detailed explanation-4: -In New France, the term “coureur de bois” referred to colonists who, as of the 1660s, travelled to Indigenous territories to gather fur (beaver, moose, caribou, etc.). Mainly, these men obtained skins and furs from Indigenous peoples by trading for manufactured products, not by hunting themselves.