The Voyageur [Paperback]

Grace Lee Nute (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1987

The Voyageur is the authoritative account of a unique and colorful group of men whose exploits, songs, and customs comprise an enduring legacy. French Canadians who guided and paddled the canoes of explorers and fur traders, the voyageurs were experts at traversing the treacherous rapids and dangerous open waters of the canoe routes from Quebec and Montreal to the regions bordering the Great Lakes and on to the Mackenzie and Columbia Rivers. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, explorers and fur traders relied on the voyageurs to open up the vast reaches of North America to settlement and trade.

A noted scholar of the fur trade, Grace Lee Nute was a curator at the Minnesota Historical Society, a professor of history at Hamline University, and the author of The Voyageur's Highway.

Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press (March 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873512138
• ISBN-13: 978-0873512138
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #287,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Canadian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Astonishing True Story, November 8, 2006

By 

Tyler R. Tichelaar "Superior Book Promotions ... (Marquette, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voyageur (Paperback)

Grace Lee Nute's The Voyageur depicts significant figures in American and Canadian history who have received little attention. Indeed, Nute has written what many consider the classic exploration of the subject in this book that dates back to 1935. The book is divided into nine specific categories on such subjects as the voyageur's canoe, his journey, his songs, his life as explorer etc. Each section is compact, well-researched and fascinating.

The section on voyaging is especially astounding when we consider these men would carry hundreds of pounds on their back when reaching a portage or place where they had to carry their canoes and accessories overland to the next river or lake for their voyage. It is astonishing for me to think, as a resident of the Lake Superior region, what it would have been like to traverse that great lake 300 years ago, to pass through the rapids at Sault Sainte Marie when there were no locks, to sleep under your canoe, to winter inland above the Great Lakes in the dead of winter when the temperature was forty degrees below zero. Nute's book is a true tale of human courage, endurance, and determination, and she makes it clear the voyageur deserves much of the credit for many of the discoveries and explorations which are credited to other men, who never would have reached those places of discovery without their voyageurs' help.

My only criticism of the book is that most of Nute's research is based in the early eighteen hundreds, and I would have preferred to hear more about voyageurs from the earlier years of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. She does explore how important the voyageurs were even long after the United States was founded, in helping John Jacob Astor's American Fur Trade Company, and their roles in early American events, especially the War of 1812. The book is a must read for anyone who lives in the Great Lakes Region or is interested in the early exploration and settlement of North America.

- Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of Iron Pioneers and The Queen City, available on Amazon

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An informative and entertaining read, January 7, 2008

By 

D. Lesperance (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voyageur (Paperback)

I purchased this book shortly after returning from a week in northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe area, the general area of my birthplace, many relatives and my french canadian ancestors. After visiting the historic site of the NW trading company at Grand Portage, I was ashamed to admit how little I knew of the this important and colorful part of early american history. I found the book not only informative but very entertaining as well. The first half of the book focuses on the origins, life and culture of the voyageur and then expands into their additional roles as explorers, early settlers etc. Accompanying the story of the voyageur, there is much necessary early 19th century NW history included and required, as The voyageurs served a vast expanse of present day US and Canadian territory both before and during the period described in the book and their contributions go far beyond those of Master Paddlers.

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A vanished way of life, March 31, 2001

By 

Frank H. Straus (Springfield, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voyageur (Paperback)

Our census returns published in 2001 indicate that the population of the United States is increasingly of mixed race and ethnic identity. If I had a dollar for every pundit who claimed that this is a revolutionary situation that has never happened before in America, I could buy my own fleet of birchbark canoes. Of course, there have been many subsets of North American society that have been characterized by a mixing and blurring of ethnic identity. Some of these subsets arose centuries ago. One of them is that group of French-Canadian-Indian men and women known as the "metis" or "voyageurs." The social customs of this group, their values, their strengths, their love of life, are recounted here by an enthusiast. Miss Nute was a pioneer. She wrote before her time. I heartily recommend this book to everyone.