What do habitants do

Gambling, already popular in the s, became even more so during the following century. Virtual museum of New France. The functional furniture of the average colonist was produced by local woodworkers, however, and with local materials. Each player had a stick and, as the machine went around, they inserted the stick into rings hanging from a pole and removed them. This game of skill was an exception, however; billiards, skittles, cards and dice were much more common in the colony.

Billiards was a popular form of entertainment in all towns in New France. For a long time, it was played only by the aristocracy, but the various versions of it — all fairly different from modern billiards — became widespread in France in the eighteenth century.

In the colony, billiard tables were found primarily in urban inns and taverns. Louisbourg and New Orleans also had a few billiard tables. Innkeepers who offered billiards must have needed a lot of space to set up the table and accommodate players and spectators. Billiards was a game for two or four players, and there were often several spectators, who would referee disputed shots, if necessary.

Even if everyone had access to billiards, the game was not played at every level of society. Thirty-one people, including three women, owed money to an innkeeper named Bachelier for billiard games, and they were all officers, public servants, merchants or professionals.

It was usually played outdoors. It included a ball and eight small wooden skittles. Skittles was not reserved for the elite; on the contrary, everyone enjoyed it, young and old, domestics and artisans. However, there were sometimes misunderstandings that led to fights. When that happened, the skittles could be turned into blunt weapons and become dangerous.

Trial records show that, in , an habitant hit a soldier over the head with a skittle. The exact number of skittle sets in the colony is not known, but some inns and taverns offered skittles and boules. While all games of chance were banned from time to time in inns and taverns, dice and card games remained very popular under the French regime.

That was also the case in Louisbourg. Card games were also played in rural areas. Duchesny, who lived in Sainte-Anne, near Batiscan. The best-known card game, it was played with 36 cards in the seventeenth century and 32 in the eighteenth.

Cheating was common as well. De Chalus, a company captain, played piquet at the Grand Air Inn. The other card games mentioned in court records include lansquenet, brelan three of a kind , mouche, trut, romestre also called romilly and triomphe triumph. It includes the rules of piquet, trictrac an old form of backgammon , billiards and oie, and was updated and reprinted several times.

That edition was reprinted no less than 25 times before Estate inventories show that at least three copies of the work crossed the Atlantic. One belonged to an attorney general, one to a merchant and the third to an officer. Contemporary publications offer simplified explanations of different versions of some of these games in modern French.

Dice games were also popular, and players sometimes lost significant sums. Trictrac an old form of backgammon , with dice, cups, ivory pieces and ebony boards, was also played in New France. However, that was not common practice; people did not play trictrac, quadrille or chess in inns and taverns. The nine trictrac sets listed in New France inventories all belonged to public administrators, including Governor Philippe de Vaudreuil.

Based on estate inventories, this type of entertainment seems to have been enjoyed only by administrators and professionals.

Claude Barolet, a Louisbourg merchant, owned a set of dominos. So did travellers in search of temporary accommodation. Everything was offered: meals, snacks, cider, beer and other alcoholic beverages, and games of skill and chance. Everyone could go there to escape the monotony of daily life. Often gathered together for work or pleasure, clients met new people, exchanged the latest news, teased each other and sometimes even fought when they had had too much to drink.

However, the inhabitants of the colonies did not need to sit at a table in an inn to amuse themselves; they could play games of skill outdoors. Other forms of recreation, such as reading, music and theatre, required a quieter setting where one could concentrate, something rarely found in the inns and taverns. It was most often out of professional or religious necessity that the inhabitants of the colonies took up pastimes such as reading, music, dance and theatre, while taking into account the restrictions imposed by the Church.

Paris: Brocas, , pp. Briand, Yves. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Biographies published in volumes I to III. Ferland, Catherine. Bacchus en Canada: boissons, buveurs et ivresses en Nouvelle-France. Quebec City: Septentrion, Le Dictionnaire universel. The Hague, Rotterdam, La vie musicale en Nouvelle-France. Les divertissements en Nouvelle-France. Bulletin no. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, Voyer, Simonne. Virtual museum of New France.

Daily Life Entertainment People have always needed distraction and relaxation to get their mind off things for a while. A game of billiards The archives reveal the presence of some fifteen billiards table in Quebec city between and Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Simeon Public Billiard Room in Paris.

Music In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century society, there seems to have been a widespread taste for music. Treble viol, c. Learn More About habitant. Time Traveler for habitant The first known use of habitant was in the 15th century See more words from the same century.

Statistics for habitant Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. More from Merriam-Webster on habitant Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Priest and seigneur, habitant and coureur-de-bois were one and all difficult to fit into accepted English ways. The French habitant crossed himself, and the Saxon cursed his luck; and no one solved the mystery. He met them at their convivial gatherings, he heard the chanson sung by voyageurs, and the " habitant " caught his fancy.