While at Fort St. Charles, on the shores of the Lake of the Woods, in 1736, a great disaster overtook the party. Verendrye's eldest son was very anxious to return to Kaministiquia, as was also the Jesuit priest, Anneau, who was in company with the traders. Verendrye was unwilling, but at last consented. The party, consisting of the younger Verendrye and twenty men, were ruthlessly massacred by an ambush of the Sioux on a small island some five leagues from Fort St. Charles, still known as Massacre Island.
A few days afterwards the crime was discovered, and Verendrye had difficulty in preventing his party from accepting the offer of the Assiniboines and Christinos to follow the Sioux and wreak their vengeance upon them. During the next year Fort Maurepas was still their farthest outpost.
The ruins of Fort St. Charles on the south side of the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods were in 1908 discovered by St. Boniface Historical Society and the remains of young Verendrye's party found buried in the ruins of the chapel.
Though no assistance could be obtained from the French Court for western discovery, and although the difficulties seemed almost insurmountable, Verendrye was unwilling to give up the path open to him. He had the true spirit of the explorer, and chafed in his little stockade on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, seeking new worlds to conquer.
If it was a great event when Verendrye, in 1731, left the shores of Lake Superior to go inland, it was one of equal moment when, penniless and in debt, he determined at all hazards to leave the rocks and woods of Lake Winnipeg, and seek the broad prairies of the West. His decision being thus reached, the region which is now the fertile Canadian prairies was entered upon.
We are fortunate in having the original journal of this notable expedition of 1738, obtained by Mr. Douglas Brymner, former Archivist at Ottawa. This, with two letters of Bienville, were obtained by Mr. Brymner from a French family in Montreal, and the identity of the documents has been fully established.
This journal covers the time from the departure of Verendrye from Michilimackinac on July 20th, till say 1739, when he writes from the heart of the prairies. On September 22nd the brave Verendrye left Fort Maurepas for the land unknown. It took him but two days with his five men to cross in swift canoes the south-east expanse of Lake Winnipeg, enter the mouth of Red River, and reach the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, where the city of Winnipeg now stands.
It was thus on September 24th of that memorable year that the eyes of the white man first fell on the site of what is destined to be the great central city of Canada. A few Crees who expected him met the French explorer there, and he had a conference with two chiefs, who were in the habit of taking their furs to the English on Hudson Bay.
The water of the Assiniboine River ran at this time very low, but Verendrye was anxious to push westward. Delayed by the shallowness of the Assiniboine, the explorer's progress was very slow, but in six days he reached the portage, then used to cross to Lake Manitoba on the route to Hudson Bay. On this portage now stands the town of Portage la Prairie.
The Assiniboine Indians who met Verendrye here told him it would be useless for him to ascend the Assiniboine River further, as the water was so low. Verendrye was expecting a reinforcement to join his party, under his colleague, M. de la Marque. He determined to remain at Portage la Prairie and to build a fort. Verendrye then assembled the Indians, gave them presents of powder, ball, tobacco, axes, knives, &c., and in the name of the French King received them as the children of the great monarch across the sea, and repeated several times to them the orders of the King they were to obey.