The Vérendrye and the Post of the Western Sea.—The search for the route to the Western Sea was taken up by Gaultier de Varennes (the elder La Vérendrye), commander at Fort Nepigon, who planned a fine of posts through the waterways northwest of Lake Superior. His movements were stimulated by the activities of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, and by those of the Spaniards in the Southwest. To pay the expenses of his scheme he was granted a monopoly of the northwestern fur trade. In the course of ten years he founded posts on Rainy Lake (St. Pierre, 1731), Lake of the Woods (St. Charles, 1731), Lake Winnipeg (Maurepas, 1732), Assiniboine River (La Reine), and on the Saskatchewan (Fort Dauphin, 1741). In 1742 La France had penetrated the Hudson's Bay Company territory by crossing from Lake Winnipeg to York Factory.
From this line of posts the elder La Vérendrye turned his attention to the upper Missouri, leading an expedition southwestward to the Mantannes in 1738. Four years later his son, Pierre de Varennes, made another expedition to the Mantannes, where they heard of bearded white men to the west. Setting out southwestward, they visited the Cheyennes, Crows, Little Foxes, and Bows. On January 1, 1743, when in the neighborhood of the North Platte River, they saw the Rocky Mountains.
After Vérendrye died, his successor, Legardeur St. Pierre, extended the line of posts up the Saskatchewan to the foot of the Rockies, where in 1752 he founded Fort La Jonquiere. The French had thus reached the Rockies by way of nearly every important stream between the Red River and the Saskatchewan.
READINGS
Bolton, H.E., Athanase de Mézières, I, Introduction; Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, 1-133; "French Intrusions into New Mexico," in The Pacific Ocean in History; Dunn, W.E., Spanish and French Rivalry in the Gulf Region of the United States, 1678-1702: The Beginnings of Texas and Pensacola; Fortier, Alcée, History of Louisiana, I, 30-140; French, B.F., Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida; Gayarré, Charles, History of Louisiana, French Domination; Hamilton, P.J., Colonial Mobile; The Colonization of the South, 197-275; Heinrich, Pierre, La Louisiane sous la compagnie des Indies, 1717-1731; King, Grace, New Orleans; Sieur de Bienville; King, Grace, and Ficklen, John, History of Louisiana; LePage du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane; Martin, F.X., History of Louisiana; Ogg, F.A., The Opening of the Mississippi, 169-237; Parkman, Francis, A Half-Century of Conflict, I, 298-368, II, 3-44; Phelps, Albert, Louisiana, 20-105; Shea, J.G., Exploration of the Mississippi Valley; The Catholic Church in the United States; Thwaites, R.G., France in America, 72-88; Villiers du Terrage, Marc de, Les Dernières Années de la Louisiane Française, 1-48; Winsor, Justin, The Mississippi Basin, 1-217; Burpee, Lawrence, Pathfinders of the Great Plains.
CHAPTER XVI
TEXAS, PIMERÍA ALTA AND THE FRANCO-SPANISH BORDER CONFLICT (1687-1763)
The advance of the French into Louisiana and the Trans-Mississippi West stimulated a new counter movement northeastward by the Spaniards from Chihuahua, New Mexico, and Coahuila, and there ensued on the Franco-Spanish border a contest for the control of Texas and all the plains country as far north as the Platte River—a contest much like the better-known "half-century of conflict" between the English and the French on the other border. At the same time, the Spanish frontier forged slowly northwestward into Lower California and southern Arizona. On the other hand, the Florida frontier, which in the seventeenth century had been pushed back by the English colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas, was now still further contracted by the establishment of French Louisiana and English Georgia, while in the West Indies and Honduras Spanish rule suffered a like diminution through the continued advance of the English, French, and Dutch. The Asiento of 1713 with Great Britain was a particularly hard blow at Spain's commercial independence, and was made worse by England's gross violation of the compact.