The Pays d'en Haut
From the canoe routes that connected Montreal to the Athabasca to the company ledgers that documented who paddled them, this collection brings together the case studies, biographies, research guides, and sacred places that trace French-Canadian voyageur families through one of North America's most extraordinary chapters.
Case Studies
& Guides
Places
Documented
of Archives
BCG-standard research demonstrating how fur trade records, parish registers, and DNA evidence combine to document French-Canadian and Métis families.
For 200 years, she was nameless — listed only as "Sauvagesse" in family records. Through systematic research across five Quebec parishes and the discovery of a single marriage record preserving her Ojibwe name, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe emerged as one of the best-documented Indigenous women in colonial records.
Read Case StudyHow a 54-year-old mason ended up in the Athabasca country — and paddled alongside Lieutenant Franklin. Three Hudson's Bay Company account volumes, a 188-livre balance linking two geographically separate posts, and a single ledger entry place Gabriel Guilbault — and his brother Paul — in the orbit of the first overland Arctic expedition.
View Case StudyPractical tools for researching French-Canadian voyageur families — from NWC account books to canoe routes to country marriages.
When I searched the NWC Account Books Name Index for "Guilb," I found Gabriel in three separate records spanning five years. The documents reveal what he purchased, his wages, and the moment his account was marked "Settled" at the 1821 merger. A case study in fur trade genealogy.
ReadA man appears in Quebec records, disappears for years, then resurfaces with a wife and children who seem to have materialized from nowhere. The explanation lies in the geography of the fur trade. Understanding how families traveled tells you where to look for records.
ReadFrom 1779 to 1821, the NWC employed thousands of French-Canadian voyageurs across a network stretching from Montreal to the Pacific. Their records survive — and tell you where your ancestor worked, what he earned, what he purchased, and who he may have married.
ReadDuring the 1700s and 1800s, marriages between French fur traders and Indigenous women were fundamental social and economic institutions. These unions created strategic alliances that facilitated the fur trade and led to the emergence of Métis culture. Where to find these families in the records.
ReadFor generations, she existed only as "Sauvagesse." Using FamilySearch's Full Text Search and systematic research across five Quebec parishes, her full Ojibwe name emerged from an 1801 marriage record. Across 15 documents spanning nearly a century, she transformed from unknown to one of the best-documented Indigenous ancestors in Quebec parish records.
ReadA single phrase in a 1798 baptism record reveals what romantic mythology obscures: most voyageurs were seasonal workers who returned to their farms each autumn. They weren't footloose adventurers. They were habitants who paddled. The economics of the canoe brigades and what primary sources actually say.
ReadThe rivers, the companies, the people — context that brings the records to life.
In spring 1820, Lieutenant Franklin arrived at Fort Chipewyan needing voyageurs. He recruited from the North West Company and paid through the company books. One ledger entry — "By Lieut Franklin — 100" — connects his first Arctic expedition to a Guilbault brother working the Athabasca district that same season.
ReadWhat was it actually like to be a voyageur? To paddle 18 hours a day, carry 180 pounds across brutal portages, sleep under an overturned canoe, and spend years in the wilderness waiting to be paid? This was Gabriel Guilbault's life — and understanding it helps us understand the man behind the records.
ReadBefore French traders arrived at the St. Mary's Rapids, before the fur trade reshaped the Great Lakes, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe's ancestors had already completed a 500-year journey guided by prophecy — from the Atlantic coast to the land where food grows on water. To understand who she was, we must understand where her people came from.
ReadAt the St. Mary's River, where Lake Superior tumbles twenty-one feet into the lower Great Lakes, two worlds met. For the Ojibwe, it was Baawitigong — the gathering place. For the voyageurs, it was the strategic gateway to the fur trade interior. Somewhere at this crossroads, Marie Josephte and Gabriel Guilbault's lives first intersected.
ReadOn January 26, 1801, Father Leclerc at Oka recorded the full Ojibwe identity of an Indigenous bride — her personal spirit name Abitakijikokwe ("Half-Day Woman") and her tribal affiliation as Saulteaux of Lake Superior. This rare documentation preserved both identifiers when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse."
ReadWhen I discovered my Ojibwe 4th great-grandmother, I wasn't prepared for how profoundly it would change the way I understood my family's history. For generations she existed only as a shadow — "Sauvagesse." Then, in an 1801 marriage record, she emerged with her full Ojibwe name intact. And so began a journey into the world of Ojibwe art.
ReadFour generations from Quebec City to the Athabasca country and back — each life documented through primary sources from birth to death.
Before Gabriel paddled canoes to Lake Superior, there was his father — born in Quebec City in 1731. This Quebec patriarch married twice, raised four sons, and established the family in L'Assomption that would eventually bridge French and Indigenous worlds. His life spanned the British Conquest and the transformation of New France.
ReadBorn into the rhythms of New France and lived to see that world transform. A voyageur who paddled canoes to Lake Superior, he married an Ojibwe woman whose name — Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe — would be preserved in parish records for over a century. His 71-year journey from paddler to mason to landowner left documented proof of Métis heritage for generations.
ReadIn every Quebec parish record, Paul Guilbault is a mason and farmer — baptism, marriage, burial, children's baptisms all record him as macon or cultivateur, never voyageur. Only two documents place him in the pays d'en haut: the NWC account books that record his wages at Lac La Pluie and Athabasca alongside his brother Gabriel. Without those two ledger pages, his five years in the interior would be permanently invisible. A case study in what fur trade records reveal that parish registers never will.
Coming SoonBorn in the interior wilderness to a French-Canadian voyageur and an Ojibwe woman. Conditionally baptized at eight, legitimated at ten, his occupation shifted from journalier to voyageur to cultivateur — still claiming the paddle at sixty. Father of sixteen children. Still calling himself "voyageur" in the 1851 census at age 60. He died in 1880 as the last of the wilderness-born.
ReadHis father was a voyageur. He was a journalier. The primary sources tell a story that family narratives overlooked — of a man caught between eras, who died at 38 leaving three children under four and a widow who would live to ninety-one. This is not the story of a voyageur. This is the story of the last generation.
ReadThe churches and missions where fur trade families stopped long enough to leave a record — and the documents those stops produced.
On October 10, 1798, a voyageur named Gabriel Guilbault brought three children to Saint-Paul-de-Joliette for baptism. They had been born and "ondoyé" in the pays d'en haut. Their mother was identified as "Josephte Sauvagesse de la nation des Sauteux" — the first documented reference to her Indigenous identity.
VisitFor three centuries, this Sulpician mission stood at the confluence of Indigenous and French-Canadian cultures. Here, on January 27, 1801, Father Leclerc did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe name of an Indigenous bride — Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse sur le lac Supérieur.
VisitIn 1801, Father Leclerc at Oka carefully recorded her full Ojibwe name. Twelve years later, when she was buried at Rigaud, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation" — unnamed. The contrast tells the story of colonial record-keeping and the erasure of Indigenous identity in a single generation.
VisitA Note on the Research
All research presented here follows the Genealogical Proof Standard as defined by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Case studies distinguish between documented facts and reasoned interpretations. Where evidence is circumstantial or pending verification — as in the Franklin-Guilbault connection, which awaits confirmation in Admiralty records at the UK National Archives — this is explicitly noted.
The Paul Guilbault biography in preparation addresses a research question at the heart of fur trade genealogy: what do you do when a man appears in the account books but nowhere else in the records suggests he ever left his parish? The NWC ledgers are the entire case. That situation — far from unusual — is worth documenting in detail.
Primary sources consulted include Hudson's Bay Company Archives (Winnipeg), Archives Nationales du Québec, PRDH-IGD, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Library and Archives Canada, and the published Narrative of John Franklin (1823). The George Simpson Athabasca Journal (Champlain Society, 1938) provides essential economic and geographic context for the Guilbault brothers' NWC service.