Pathfinders of the Great Plains: A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons

by Lawrence J. Burpee

While at the Assiniboine village La Vérendrye reproached the Indians with having lied to him about the Mandans, so as to lead him to believe that they were white men. They replied that he had misunderstood them; that they had not referred to the Mandans, but to another nation who lived farther down the river. One of the Assiniboines sprang up before him and exclaimed: 'I am the man best able to talk to you about this matter. Last summer I killed one of this nation of white men. He was covered with iron armour. If I had not killed his horse first, I should myself have been destroyed.' La Vérendrye asked him what he had brought back to prove his story. 'I had no chance to bring anything,' he said. 'When I was about to cut off his head, I saw some men on horseback, who were trying to prevent my retreat, and I had much difficulty in making my escape. I had to throw away everything I had, even to my blanket, and ran away naked.'

La Vérendrye thought that this man was probably telling the truth. What he said agreed fairly well with what he had himself heard from the Mandans, and was applicable probably to the Spaniards. But he was still as far away as ever from any direct information about the road he should follow to reach the Western Sea, and this was first and always the thought that occupied his mind. He hoped that the men whom he had left behind to winter with the Mandans would be able to obtain from them the facts for which he was so anxiously waiting, and he looked forward eagerly to the spring, when they were to return to Fort La Reine with such news as they had been able to gather.

CHAPTER V

THE DISCOVERY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

La Vérendrye had expected the return in the spring of 1739 of the two men whom he had left in the Mandan villages, but it was well into the autumn before they reached Fort La Reine. They brought good news, however. During the winter they had lost no opportunity of picking up Mandan words and phrases, until at last they were able to make themselves fairly well understood in that tongue. In the early summer a number of strange Indians had arrived from the West at the Mandan villages. They were on horseback, and brought with them many additional horses to carry their provisions and supplies. They came in order to trade embroidered buffalo hides and other skins with the Mandans for corn and beans, which they did not grow in their own country.

The young Frenchmen learned from the Mandans that a band of these Indians had their home in the extreme West, towards the setting sun. The Mandans also reported that in this country there were white men, who lived in brick and stone houses. In order to make further inquiries the two Frenchmen visited these Indians, and were fortunate enough to find among them a chief who spoke the language of the Mandans. He professed to speak also the language of the white men who dwelt in the West, but when the French heard this language they could make nothing of it. The chief declared that the strangers in his country wore beards and that in many other respects they resembled the white men. He declared that they prayed to the Master of Life in great buildings, where the Indians had seen them holding in their hands what, from their description, must have been books, the leaves like 'husks of Indian corn.' Their houses were described as standing near the shores of the great lake, whose waters rise and fall, and are unfit to drink. This would mean tides and salt water. If this Indian story was true, and there did not seem to be any reason for doubting it, La Vérendrye at last had something definite to guide him in his search for the Western Sea. He had but to find his way to the homes of these mysterious white strangers on its shores; and he hoped that the Indian band who had visited the Mandans, and from whom his men had obtained these particulars, would be able and willing to provide him with competent guides.

For some reason La Vérendrye was unable himself to return to the country of the Mandans or to go still farther west. But in the spring of 1740 he sent his eldest son Pierre into that country in order to make further inquiries, and to obtain guides if possible for the projected journey to the Western Sea. Pierre spent the following winter with the Mandans, but he could not find the men he needed as guides, and so he returned to Fort La Reine in the summer of 1741.