Lumberjack

Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled using hand tools and dragged by oxen to rivers.

The work was difficult, dangerous, intermittent, low-paying, and involved living in primitive conditions. However, the men built a traditional culture that celebrated strength, masculinity, confrontation with danger, and resistance to modernization.

Etymology

The term lumberjack is of Canadian derivation. The first attested use of the term combining its two components comes from an 1831 letter to the Cobourg, Ontario, Star and General Advertiser in the following passage: "my misfortunes have been brought upon me chiefly by an incorrigible, though perhaps useful, race of mortals called lumberjacks, whom, however, I would name the Cossacks of Upper Canada, who, having been reared among the oaks and pines of the wild forest, have never been subjected to the salutary restraint of laws."

The term lumberjack is primarily historical, and of colloquial contemporary usage; logger is commonly used by workers in the 21st century. When lumberjack is used, it usually refers to a logger from an earlier time before the advent of chainsaws, feller-bunchers and other modern logging equipment. Other terms for the occupation include woodcutter, shanty boy and the regional woodhick of Pennsylvania, United States. In Australia, the occupation is referred to as timber cutter or cool cutters.

A logger employed in driving logs down a river was known locally in northern North America as a river pig, river hog, river rat, or catty-man.