DCHP-1 Online

house

• 1 n. Fur Trade a trading post, especially, in later years, an inland post.

  • 1690  (1929)  Distance from hence by Judgement at ye lest From ye house six hundred miles southwest.
  • 1779  (1934)  Good Pine or Poplar might be got near the House fit for Planking and Birch or a kind of Hickery fit for Knees and Timbers.
  • 1828  (1872)  They [Sicanee] seem to deserve a house somewhere, for their country is rich in beaver.
  • 1873  (1883)  Finlay's House, and Mackay's House. These "houses" were the trading posts of the first English Free-traders, whose combination in 1783 gave rise to the great North-West Fur Company.
  • 1966  He's . . . a Cree from the Cumberland House region of Saskatchewan. . . .

• 2 n. Obs. a domed structure of mud, sticks, stones, etc. built as a rule in a beaver pond behind the dam and used as a den by a family of beavers.

  See also: beaver house  beaver lodge  

  • 1743  (1949)  they [beaver] have a house they build mostly by creeks or Rivilets, the strength & Curiousness of which house would puzle a good workman to do the Like. . . .
  • 1748  The Plenty of Water was not natural to the Place, but owing to its being kept up by Dams, the Work of the Beavers; which Animals had also built a House on the Side of this Creek.

• 3 n. a small structure usually built against a tree trunk or bank and used for housing bait, a trap for small animals being set inside the entrance.

  See also: trap house  

  • 1965  For mink, fisher or marten Mr. Paquette makes a "house" of sticks and stones containing a bait of meat or fish, with the trap in the entrance.