Many voyageurs and coureurs des bois entered into formal or informal unions (marriage à la façon du pays) with Native women.
[citation needed] The first known use of the term Muskrat French is found in an 1877 essay by Detroit naturalist, historian, and writer Bela Hubbard.
[5] Annual dinners featuring muskrat are held around Monroe County, Michigan, continuing a tradition from the earliest days of settlement.
Families associated with the fur trade were part of kinship networks that often had members in towns throughout the region, such as in Green Bay, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, St. Ignace, and Michilimackinac as well as Detroit.
[8][9] The genealogies of many descendants of French settlers of Detroit and the Great Lakes region include Indigenous peoples.