There followed a period of high hopes and of heartbreaking failure.In 1731 La Verendrye set out for the West with three sons, a nephew, a Jesuit priest, the Indian Ochagach as guide--a party numbering in all about fifty.He intended to build trading-posts as he went westward and to make the last post always a base from which to advance still farther.His difficulties read like those of Columbus.His men not only disliked the hard work which was inevitable but were haunted by superstitious fears of malignant fiends in the unknown land who were ready to punish the invaders of their secrets.The route lay across the rough country beyond Lake Superior.There were many long portages over which his men must carry the provisions and heavy stores for trade.At length the party reached Rainy Lake, and out of Rainy Lake the waters flow westward.The country seemed delightful.Fish and game were abundant, and it was not hard to secure a rich store of furs.On the shore of the lake, in a charming meadow surrounded by oak trees, La Verendrye built a trading-post on waters flowing to the west, naming it Fort St.
Pierre.
The voyageurs could now travel westward with the current.It is certain that other Frenchmen had preceded them in that region, but this is the first voyage of discovery of which we have any details.Escorted by an imposing array of fifty canoes of Indians, La Verendrye floated down Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and here, on a beautiful peninsula jutting out into the lake, he built another post, Fort St.Charles.It must have seemed imposing to the natives.On walls one hundred feet square were four bastions and a watchtower; evidence of the perennial need of alertness and strength in the Indian country.There were a chapel, houses for the commandant and the priest, a powder-magazine, a storehouse, and other buildings.La Verendrye cleared some land and planted wheat, and was thus the pioneer in the mighty wheat production of the West.Fish and game were abundant and the outlook was smiling.By this time the second winter of La Verendrye's adventurous journeying was near, but even the cold of that hard region could not chill his eagerness.
He himself waited at Fort St.Charles but his eldest son, Jean Baptiste, set out to explore still farther.
We may follow with interest the little group of Frenchmen and Indian guides as they file on snowshoes along the surface of the frozen river or over the deep snow of the silent forest on, ever on, to the West.They are the first white men of whom we have certain knowledge to press beyond the Lake of the Woods into that great Northwest so full of meaning for the future.The going was laborious and the distances seemed long, for on their return they reported that they had gone a hundred and fifty leagues, though in truth the distance was only a hundred and fifty miles.Then at last they stood on the shores of a vast body of water, ice-bound and forbidding as it lay in the grip of winter.It opened out illimitably westward.But it was not the Western Sea, for its waters were fresh.The shallow waters of Lake Winnipeg empty not into the Western Sea but into the Atlantic by way of Hudson Bay.
Its shores then were deserted and desolate, and even to this day they are but scantily peopled.In that wild land there was no hint of the populous East of which La Verendrye had dreamed.
At the mouth of the Winnipeg River, where it enters Lake Winnipeg, La Verendrye built Fort Maurepas, named after the French minister who was in charge of the colonies and who was influential at court.The name no doubt expresses some clinging hope which La Verendrye still cherished of obtaining help from the King.Already he was hard pressed for resources.Where were the means to come from for this costly work of building forts?
>From time to time he sent eastward canoes laden with furs which, after a long and difficult journey, reached Montreal.The traders to whom the furs were consigned sold them and kept the money as their own on account of their outlay.La Verendrye in the far interior could not pay his men and would soon be without goods to trade with the Indians.After having repeatedly begged for help but in vain, he made a rapid journey to Montreal and implored the Governor to aid an enterprise which might change the outlook of the whole world.The Governor was willing but without the consent of France could not give help.By promising the traders, who were now partners in his monopoly, profits of one hundred per cent on their outlay, La Verendrye at last secured what he needed.His canoes were laden with goods, and soon brawny arms were driving once again the graceful craft westward.He had offered a new hostage to fortune by arranging that his fourth son, a lad of eighteen, should follow him in the next year.
La Verendrye pressed on eagerly in advance of the heavy-laden canoes.Grim news met him soon after he reached Fort St.Charles on the Lake of the Woods.His nephew La Jemeraye, a born leader of men, who was at the most advanced station, Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, had broken down from exposure, anxiety, and overwork, and had been laid in a lonely grave in the wilderness.
Nearly all pioneer work is a record of tragedy and its gloom lies heavy on the career of La Verendrye.A little later came another sorrow-laden disaster.La Verendrye sent his eldest son Jean back to Rainy Lake to hurry the canoes from Montreal which were bringing needed food.The party landed on a peninsula at the discharge of Rainy Lake into Rainy River, fell into an ambush of Sioux Indians, and were butchered to a man.This incident reveals the chief cause of the slow progress in discovery in the Great West: the temper of the savages was always uncertain.
