coureur de bois
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Borrowed from French coureur des bois, literally “woods runner”.
Noun
coureur de bois (plural coureurs de bois)
- (historical) A fur trader operating in North America in the seventeenth or eighteenth century without permission from the French authorities.
- 2011, Colin Woodard, chapter 2, in American Nations, New York: Penguin, →ISBN:
- Those who stayed in New France often fled the fields to take up lives in the wilderness, where they traded for furs with the Indians or simply “went native.” […] In contemporary terms, these woodsmen—or coureurs de bois—were first-generation immigrants to aboriginal societies whose cultures and values they partially assimilated.