DCHP-1 Online

Northman

• 1 n. Fur Trade, Hist. a seasoned fur trader or voyageur who spent his winters in the fur country.

  See also: Man of the North (def. 1)  winterer (def. 2a)  

  • 1793  (1933)  The North men while here live in tents of different sizes pitched at random. . . .
  • 1894  To the north-men, as the employés who wintered in the forest were called, were attached more than seven hundred native women and children, victualled at the Company's expense.
  • 1938  Beyond Grande Portage the freighting was taken over by the boastful, hard-drinking, hard-fighting Northmen whose duty it was to convey the goods to the distant wilds of Saskatchewan and the Athabasca.
  • 1957  It had been said that no other northman could blow up such a wind of brag or sweeten insults with such wild honey. . . .

• 2 n. a resident or native of the North, especially the Far North.

  See also: Northerner (def. 1)  

  • 1953  The northmen of the forts, the trappers and wanderers of the barrens, speak from lifetimes of experience and an intimate concern with things northern.

• 3 n. an Indian of the north coast of British Columbia, especially of the Haida.

  See also: Northern Indian (def. 2)  

  • 1958  The northmen they feared were the dreaded Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands.