"New France C. 1640s" Topic

I am hoping the group can help me with some questions. I am writing a miniatures game ('Flint and Feather') primarily concerned with the wars between the Iroquois and Huron peoples in the Great Lakes area. European involvement is limited, but I'd like to include the possibility of featuring Europeans other than 'haplessly heroic Jesuits'.

1) Anyone know much about the first generation of Coureurs de Bois? They are shown in the book and movie, 'Black Robe' as Frenchmen gone very native indeed. Matchlocks or traditional First Nations weaponry?

2) French soldiers from Quebec/Montreal. Would they have a portion of pikes and/or shorter staff weapons as well as muskets? Armour and helmets? Would they have set aside the more obviously useless bits when and if they entered the wilderness?

Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

My books from when my undergrad major was New France History is in storage at my folk's place(I'm working on my PhD in Geography now), but off the top of my head the answers would be:

1) It depends. Many of would take some native weaponry (tomohawks are great all around tools in camp), but the rule of thumb was that the musket trumped the bow if you had access to the musket. Part of that was prestige, but the other part was the superor "knockdown" power of the lead ball over the arrow.

2) This is a bit out of the time period (1660s), but whilst the English Civil War sodiers were still in pike and shot mode, but I'm quite certain that the Carignan-Salières Regiment wasn't issued pikes when then re-inforced the mercantile garrison of 100 soldiers in 1663.

Hope that helps.

While a matchlock musket would have been a prestige weapon in the 1640s, an outlaw gone native would have had very limited access to ammunition resupply.

Pikes could be useful defending fortifications. They would have been darn cumbersome in among the trees. Yes, armor was still in use in the 1640s.

While there be a thin line between an outlaw gone native and unotherized fur trader, many aspects of dress and tools were just too practical to pass on for the early Habitants.

Even in the SYW, the Companie Franche de la Marine were issed steel tomawaks as CCW and gerneral camp tool as well as moccassins and native style leggings since the were very practical in the bush.

if you had access to the musket.

I guess I should have elaborated that it was understood that you needed ball and shot to use the weapon properly, else it's just an expensive and heavy club…

I have an interest, but am not terribly knowledgeable. I did start a conversation a while back based on a skirmish a French ancestor was involved in.

TMP link

MJS,
I take it you are doing the rules to complement Bob Murch's line of figures?

Mexican Jack Squint,
There really isn't any real European involvement here other than trading for furs for firearms and teaching the Indians how to use them. It was mainly the Dutch, French and, to a lesser extant, the Swedes involved in this activity. The Jesuits are basically described as fine Catholics that were Frenchmen first. They'd rile up the Indians and unleash them. I can't find any reference to Coureurs de Bois at this time though it would make good Hollywood! If I rightly recall, Bob Murch is releasing a Jesuit or two in the one pack to fire the Indians up.

The first coureurs de bois was Etienne Brule who was sent to Huronia by Samuel de Champlain in 1610 to learn about the Wendat nation (later called Hurons). He was 19 or 20 years old at the time. He traveled there in 1610/11 and wintered with the Wendat. When he returned to the Habitation du Quebec (now Quebec City) with 200 Wendat to trade with the French, Champlain commented in his journals that Etienne had "gone native" ('sauvage') and was dressed and behaved like a Wendat. Brule would later trade with the Iroquois and historians surmise that when the Wendat/Huron learned of this they killed him some years later.
Some interesting sources on the net are:
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Cheers.
Rod Robertson

MJS:
Some coureurs des bois became quite famous or infamous. Étienne Brulé, Louis Joliet, Médard des Groseilliers and Pierre-Esprit Radisson (who felt abused by the local French elite and worked against them), Jean Nicolet, Guillaume Couture, and La Vérendrye were all coureurs de bois. The coureur des bois is a legendary character in the culture of French Canada and continues to be a subject of inspiration today in Quebec and Canada alike. Looking up their individual names on the 'inter-web' may provide some useful information for you.
Cheers.
Rod Robertson

If you can get hold of it – The Children of Aataensic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 – by Bruce Trigger is a good source.

It's currently stuffed away somewhere, but if I remember correctly the book mentions that towards the later part of the period muskets were not that uncommon – Iroquois would get them through trade, but the French only traded muskets to Catholics, so there were fewer muskets among the Huron (however, some Hurons were Catholic).

Regards,

Michael

The French lifted their policy of not trading firearms to natives officially in 1681, but unofficially they had been doing it since the early 1650's as a response to the Iroquois raids on New France's settlers and forts.
Rod Robertson