A coureur des bois or coureur de bois were independent entrepreneurial French Canadian traders who travelled in New France and the interior of North America, usually to trade with First Nations peoples by exchanging various European items for furs. Some learned the trades and practices of the indigenous peoples.
Coureur de bois, a woodcut by Arthur Heming (1870–1940)
A coureur des bois in the painting La Vérendrye at the Lake of the Woods, circa 1900–1930
Depiction of Samuel de Champlain (1574–1635) by Theophile Hamel (1870)
Radisson & Groseillers Established the Fur Trade in the Great North West, 1662, by Archibald Bruce Stapleton (1917–1950)
French Canadians, or Franco-Canadians, are an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to French colonists who settled in France's colony of Canada beginning in the 17th century.
Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall by Frances Anne Hopkins
Habitants by Cornelius Krieghoff (1852)
Université de Saint-Boniface in Manitoba