Monday Answer
Answer to first part is Voyageurs. These were mostly short, squat, but powerfully built upper body French and Scottish men who established the interior fur trade in Canada then called Athabasca frontier. Theirs was a world governed by season and weather. Starting in May, after the ice broke, and after a �leisurely� 1000 mile trip from Montreal via frigid water rowing through each of the Great Lakes, the Montreal voyageurs would head for Grand Portage near present day Detroit. By late June, the open, freight canoes-- four ton, 40 foot bark canoes--perhaps 30 of them in each of several trade brigades would arrive. The Voyageurs, led by a top hated man called the �bourgeois� then set up for trade�blankets, powder, guns, utensils etc. for pelts. One of the first portages after arriving at the Grand Portage was nine miles over forest, rock and mud flats to a place off the Pigeon River. This the men did with 180 pounds on their back and they did it at a trot�four times each. After that things got rustic. In July, other voyageur men who had spent the winter in the Athabaska North inland traveled from the extreme back country down to various portages funneling to larger and larger camps where trades were made�goods for pelts. The men of the North called the Montreal men �mangeurs du lard� because they had it easy by comparison. In July, the North men left the camps loaded with goods and headed in their smaller 25 foot canoes with six to eight man crews back up north against the current loaded with 3000 pounds of cargo in each canoe. They used four foot long paddles of cedar and basswood and poles for pushing, bison skin ropes for pulling. They worked sixteen to twenty hour days, and helped by their own singing, managed a consistent forty paddling strokes a minute making six miles an hour in slack water. Sixty to eighty miles a day was the goal. Nights were for melting pitch for repairing the canoes, drying clothes, and eating a ball of fat mixed with berries and grain, and dried meat to keep up caloric intake.
As to landmarks, the Voyageurs lobbed the trees. Lob trees were prominent trees used as guides or landmarks along routes. Branches were lopped (or lobbed) off the trees for a couple of feet just below the top to make them more conspicuous. They were located at important places along canoe routes to indicate a trail, portage, or direction to a camp. It was a indian trick used to provide the knower where to turn, but the unknower would not notice.
Most of the men could not swim and drowning was the cause of most deaths of the men. Think about that when pondering a open canoe versus the fate of a few of today�s ore boats on Canada's lakes in March, April and October and November.
The fact that the voyageur lived with the natives, took wives, suffered the same weather and conditions, and wanted only pelts not land, is credited with the difference between white and red race attitudes of the Canada Indians compared to United States Indians. Voyageur tradition and attitude also is carried over in part when considering the difference between the police of the U.S. and that of the RCMP with the people they need to monitor.
For sources type in "voyageurs" on a browser. You can also check "American Folklore and Legend" a Readers Digest publication, and The Old West Series "The Canadians" by Time Life.