Pioneers in Canada

by Harry Johnston

Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner described. After that he spent thirty years travelling and trading about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and pronounced Dălăth (instead of "Dülüt"). It is the name given to the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.

When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end—he died at Montreal in 1710—and after the era of great French explorations in North America drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.

The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE GAULTIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact, these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La Vérendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a route to the Pacific Ocean.[13]

La Vérendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Joséphine, the grandfather of Napoleon III.

This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Vérendrye the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.[14] This monopoly enabled La Vérendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew, fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary. For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La Vérendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays, necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants of Montreal, La Vérendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg. They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Vérendrye established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of £1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure to convey La Vérendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be a large one—perhaps only £1500.

But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus La Vérendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.

La Vérendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position. He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be completely revenged on the treacherous white man.

When La Vérendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La Vérendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of porcupine quills.

Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in 1738 La Vérendrye started with two of his sons, several other Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La Vérendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November, 1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and who presented La Vérendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.