Voyageur's Toque

Everyone on this continent has always faced the same challenge: to make a living.

For the first inhabitants, this meant agriculture, hunting, and fishing. For the first Europeans to arrive, it also meant extracting commodities like timber and fish for global markets. The fur trade drew them ever deeper into the continent, traveling up and down the rivers.

This French-Canadian North Woods hat comes from Pack Duluth, a small company at the tip of Lake Superior. It is understood to represent traditional wilderness travel by paddle, and it has never gone out of style.

This hat resembles the red Liberty Cap, an important symbol in America's revolutionary era. Based on the headgear of former slaves who had become free men in ancient Greece and Rome, the liberty cap appears on the seal of the United States Army. It is also echoed in George Caleb Bingham's depictions of American rivermen.

– David Hammond