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Making the Voyageur World, Making the Voyageur World, 0803287909, 0-8032-8790-9, 978-0-8032-8790-7, 9780803287907, Carolyn Podruchny, France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization, Making the Voyageur World, 0803205481, 0-8032-0548-1, 978-0-8032-0548-2, 9780803205482, Carolyn Podruchny, France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonizatio
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Making the Voyageur World
paperback
2006.
416 pp.
Illus., maps
978-0-8032-8790-7
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 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. Scholars and public historians alike have cast them in the romantic role of rugged and merry heroes who paved the way for European civilization in the wild Northwest. Carolyn Podruchny looks beyond the stereotypes and reveals the contours of voyageurs’ lives, world views, and values. Making the Voyageur World shows that the voyageurs created distinct identities shaped by their French-Canadian peasant roots, the Aboriginal peoples they met in the Northwest, and the nature of their employment as indentured servants in diverse environments. Voyageurs’ identities were also shaped by their constant travels and by their own masculine ideals that emphasized strength, endurance, and daring. Although voyageurs left few conventional traces of their own voices in the documentary record, an astonishing amount of information can be found in descriptions of them by their masters, explorers, and other travelers. By examining their lives in conjunction with the metaphor of the voyage, Podruchny not only reveals the everyday lives of her subjects—what they ate, their cosmology and rituals of celebration, their families, and, above all, their work—but also underscores their impact on the social and cultural landscape of North America.  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.
 “[Podruchny’s] study provides a welcome examination of the society and cultural dynamics of this well-known but over-romanticized group of people who have suffered from generations of inaccurate stereotyping. . . . Her significant efforts have enabled her to present a vivid sense of the voyageurs’ world, including much that is intriguing about their values, behaviors, and beliefs.—John T. McGrath, Journal of American History “There are a number of fine works on the North American fur trade, but few of them deal specifically with the backbone of that trade, the voyageurs. . . . [A]n exceptional contribution. . . . Given the lack of material originating with the voyageurs themselves, Podruchny has done a remarkable job drawing a sensible, believable account of the voyageurs, their environment, and their relations with those who shared that environment.”—CHOICE “A rich and lively portrait of voyageur life. . . . Making the Voyageur World is the most comprehensive, scholarly, and interesting work on the voyaguers, who constituted one of the most significant groups of labourers in nineteenth-century Canada and the North American West.”—Brett Rushforth, Itinerario “What is particularly impressive about Podruchny’s work is her skillful interpretation of primary sources. The challenge in telling any story about the voyageurs is the fact that they were overwhelmingly illiterate and therefore left almost no written records of their own. Podruchny garners a great deal of information about the voyageurs from an examination of sources left by travelers, explorers, and particularly the bourgeois. . . . Podruchny’s use of a large number of sources allows her to illuminate for the reader the rich cultural and social lives of voyageurs.”—Brian Schefke, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
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