Trappers
This section of the web site will provide information on the historic Labrador trappers and the header is a map of the area that shows historic traplines as well as the location of trapper's tilts.
In the map you can see Lake Melville, North West River and Goose Bay.
Trapping was the focus of most of the settlers' time and energy in the fall and winter. Even tasks like picking berries, salting fish, hauling wood and the like were done against the time when the men would be away on their traplines. The women and children were left to take care of things at home on their own.
The extent to which trapping was important depended on where people had settled. For those around North West River , trapping was their most important yearly activity, spanning 6-8 months from fall to mid-spring. So important did it become that by 1939, 15,000 traps were being set in the Lake Melville area by 87 trappers, each with trapping rights to a parcel of land.
The settlers in North West River first started to trap around 1840. (Before that time, Montagnais Innu in the area had trapped for French traders.) Settler trappers used single and double-spring traps to catch fox, mink, beaver, otter, muskrat, weasel, wolf, lynx and even bears. The rubbed beaver prided (testes) on a rock, stick or animal carcass to serve as bait.
The first man known to trade with trappers in North West River was Henry Thevenet, who took the furs to Montreal for auction. Besides the Innu families, the Goudies, McLeans , Michelins, Hopes, Riches, Blakes and Baikies trapped in the area.
For many liveyers on the outer coast, winter trapping on the coastal tundra or forest tundra was poor. These settlers copied the ways of the Inuit more than they did those of the Innu.
For example, they adopted the use of dogsleds, sealskin boots and ulus. Traplines might be set very near the winter home, thus not requiring the long distances, large number of traps or long periods away from home that Upper Lake Melville traplines did. For families on the outer coast, nonetheless, economic hardship was severe.
In the map you can see Lake Melville, North West River and Goose Bay.
Trapping was the focus of most of the settlers' time and energy in the fall and winter. Even tasks like picking berries, salting fish, hauling wood and the like were done against the time when the men would be away on their traplines. The women and children were left to take care of things at home on their own.
The extent to which trapping was important depended on where people had settled. For those around North West River , trapping was their most important yearly activity, spanning 6-8 months from fall to mid-spring. So important did it become that by 1939, 15,000 traps were being set in the Lake Melville area by 87 trappers, each with trapping rights to a parcel of land.
The settlers in North West River first started to trap around 1840. (Before that time, Montagnais Innu in the area had trapped for French traders.) Settler trappers used single and double-spring traps to catch fox, mink, beaver, otter, muskrat, weasel, wolf, lynx and even bears. The rubbed beaver prided (testes) on a rock, stick or animal carcass to serve as bait.
The first man known to trade with trappers in North West River was Henry Thevenet, who took the furs to Montreal for auction. Besides the Innu families, the Goudies, McLeans , Michelins, Hopes, Riches, Blakes and Baikies trapped in the area.
For many liveyers on the outer coast, winter trapping on the coastal tundra or forest tundra was poor. These settlers copied the ways of the Inuit more than they did those of the Innu.
For example, they adopted the use of dogsleds, sealskin boots and ulus. Traplines might be set very near the winter home, thus not requiring the long distances, large number of traps or long periods away from home that Upper Lake Melville traplines did. For families on the outer coast, nonetheless, economic hardship was severe.
Daily Life
Alone they lay beside their glowing campfires, Read and reread the writing on a can, And slept and woke and fed their fired and dreamed Of home, comfort, and summer in the land. - Leslie Pardy, Ode to Trappers, in Tim Borlase, Songs of Labrador , p. 116
A trapper's day probably went something like this.
About for o'clock in the morning he begins his day and can only pitch (set up) his camp when twilight has fallen. All day he is seeking and arranging his traps, carrying a sack with the game and bait. When in the evenings he reaches his hut he must make a fire, melt and skin his booty, eat and bake break from the next day…. When everything is in order for the net day, it is often past eleven or midnight. The cold often wakes him in the night, and once or twice he must get up and put wood in the stove, the fire is his guard. If he neglects to chop wood in the evening for his stove he may freeze to death in his sleep as did John Pardy's brother. On the fur paths the trappers carry neither blanket nor sleeping bag for the sack with his game is heavy enough. - Harry Paddon, "The Trapper's Day," Them Days, Vol. 1, No. 1, p.5.
A trapper's day probably went something like this.
About for o'clock in the morning he begins his day and can only pitch (set up) his camp when twilight has fallen. All day he is seeking and arranging his traps, carrying a sack with the game and bait. When in the evenings he reaches his hut he must make a fire, melt and skin his booty, eat and bake break from the next day…. When everything is in order for the net day, it is often past eleven or midnight. The cold often wakes him in the night, and once or twice he must get up and put wood in the stove, the fire is his guard. If he neglects to chop wood in the evening for his stove he may freeze to death in his sleep as did John Pardy's brother. On the fur paths the trappers carry neither blanket nor sleeping bag for the sack with his game is heavy enough. - Harry Paddon, "The Trapper's Day," Them Days, Vol. 1, No. 1, p.5.