coureur de bois

plural coureurs de bois · alternative coureur des bois

1. historicalA fur trader operating in North America in the seventeenth or eighteenth century without permission from the French authorities.

   1 more example

   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.

   2011, Colin Woodard, chapter 2, in American Nations, New York: Penguin, →ISBN