"The French," laughed the Crees.
The Sioux at once went back to a band of one hundred and thirty warriors. "Tigers of the plains" the Sioux were called, and now the tigers' blood was up. They set out to slay the first white man seen. By chance, he was one Bourassa, coasting by himself. Taking him captive, they had tied him to burn him, when a slave squaw rushed out, crying: "What would you do? This Frenchman is a friend of the Sioux! He saved my life! If you desire to be avenged, go farther on! You will find a camp of Frenchmen, among whom is the son of the white chief!"
The voyageur was at once unbound, and scouts scattered to find the white men. Night had passed before the scouts had carried news of Jean de la Vérendrye's men to the marauding warriors. The ghostly gray of dawn saw the voyageurs paddling swiftly through the morning mist from island to island of the Lake of the Woods. Cleaving the mist behind, following solely by the double foam wreaths rippling from the canoe prows, came the silent boats of the Sioux. When sunrise lifted the fog, the pursuers paused like stealthy cats. At sunrise Jean de la Vérendrye landed his crews for breakfast. Camp-fires told the Indians where to follow.
A few days later bands of Sautaux came to the camping ground of the French. The heads of the white men lay on a beaver skin. All had been scalped. The missionary, Aulneau, was on his knees, as if in morning prayers. An arrow projected from his head. His left hand was on the earth, fallen forward, his right hand uplifted, invoking Divine aid. Young Vérendrye lay face down, his back hacked to pieces, a spear sunk in his waist, the headless body mockingly decorated with porcupine quills. So died one of the bravest of the young nobility in New France.
The Sautaux erected a cairn of stones over the bodies of the dead. All that was known of the massacre was vague Indian gossip. The Sioux reported that they had not intended to murder the priest, but a crazy-brained fanatic had shot the fatal arrow and broken from restraint, weapon in hand. Rain-storms had washed out all marks of the fray.
In September the bodies of the victims were carried to Fort St. Charles, and interred in the chapel. Eight hundred Crees besought M. de la Vérendrye to let them avenge the murder; but the veteran of Malplaquet exhorted them not to war. Meanwhile, Fort St. Charles awaited the coming of supplies from Lake Superior.
IV
1736-1740
A week passed, and on the 17th of June the canoe loads of ammunition and supplies for which the murdered voyageurs had been sent arrived at Fort St. Charles. In June the Indian hunters came in with the winter's hunt; and on the 20th thirty Sautaux hurried to Fort St. Charles, to report that they had found the mangled bodies of the massacred Frenchmen on an island seven leagues from the fort. Again La Vérendrye had to choose whether to abandon his cherished dreams, or follow them at the risk of ruin and death. As before, when his men had mutinied, he determined to advance.
Jean, the eldest son, was dead. Pierre and François were with their father. Louis, the youngest, now seventeen years of age, had come up with the supplies. Pierre at once went to Lake Winnipeg, to prepare Fort Maurepas for the reception of all the forces. Winter set in. Snow lay twelve feet deep in the forests now known as the Minnesota Borderlands. On February 8, 1737, in the face of a biting north wind, with the thermometer at forty degrees below zero, M. de la Vérendrye left Fort St. Charles, François carrying the French flag, with ten soldiers, wearing snow-shoes, in line behind, and two or three hundred Crees swathed in furs bringing up a ragged rear. The bright uniforms of the soldiers were patches of red among the snowy everglades. Bivouac was made on beds of pine boughs,—feet to the camp-fire, the night frost snapping like a whiplash, the stars flashing with a steely clearness known only in northern climes. The march was at a swift pace, for three weeks by canoe is short enough time to traverse the Minnesota and Manitoba Borderlands northwest to Lake Winnipeg; and in seventeen days M. de la Vérendrye was at Fort Maurepas.