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

by Lawrence J. Burpee

La Vérendrye had now carried out, and more than carried out, the agreement made with the governor Beauharnois. He had established a chain of posts—strung like beads on a string—from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg, from the river Kaministikwia to the open prairie. But the distance he had traversed, the difficulties he had encountered, and, above all, the expense incurred, had been far in excess of anything he had anticipated. These were discouraging experiences. He seemed at last to have reached the limit of his resources and endurance. To advance farther with the slender means now at his command seemed almost impossible. Should he turn back? His men were more than willing. Every step eastward would bring them nearer their homes, their families, and the pleasures and dissipations of the Canadian towns on the far-off St Lawrence. To turn back was the easiest thing for them. But it was not easy for a man like La Vérendrye. To return meant failure; and for him there was no such thing as failure while health and strength endured. At whatever cost, he must push on towards the Western Sea.

The situation was nevertheless most critical. His own means had long since been exhausted. True, he possessed a monopoly of the fur trade, but what did it profit him? He had not touched, and never would be able to touch, a franc of the proceeds: the shrewd merchants of Montreal had made sure of this. To La Vérendrye the monopoly was simply a millstone added to the burdens he was already forced to bear. It did not increase his resources; it delayed his great enterprise; and it put an effective weapon in the hands of his enemies. Little cause had he to be grateful for the royal monopoly. He would have infinitely preferred the direct grant of even a score of capable, well-equipped men. These, maintained at the king's expense, he might lead by the quickest route to the Western Sea.

As it was, the merchants in Montreal refused to send up further supplies; his men remained unpaid; he even lacked a sufficient supply of food. There was nothing for it but to turn back, make the long journey to Montreal and Quebec, and there do his utmost to arrange matters. He had already sunk from 40,000 to 50,000 livres in the enterprise. In all justice, the king should assume the expense of further explorations in quest of the Great Sea. The governor, the Marquis de Beauharnois, shared this view, and had already pressed the court to grant La Vérendrye the assistance he so urgently needed. 'The outlay,' he wrote to the king's minister, Maurepas, 'will not be great; the cost of the engagés [hired men] for three years, taking into account what can be furnished from the king's stores, would not exceed 30,000 livres at most.' The king, however, refused to undertake the expense of the expedition. Those who had assumed the task should, he thought, be in a position to continue it by means of the profits derived from their monopoly of the fur trade. The facts did not justify the royal view of the matter. La Vérendrye had enjoyed the monopoly for two or three years—with the result that he was now very heavily, indeed alarmingly, in debt.

His was not a nature, however, to be crushed by either indifference or opposition. He had reached the parting of the ways. Nothing was to be hoped for from the court. He must either abandon his enterprise or continue it at his own risk and expense. He went to Montreal and saw his partners. With infinite patience he suffered their unjust reproaches. He was neglecting their interests, they grumbled. The profits were not what they had a right to expect. He thought too much of the Western Sea and not enough of the beavers. He was a dreamer, and they were practical men of business.

What could La Vérendrye say that would have weight with men of this stamp? Should he tell them of the glory that would accrue to his and their country by the discovery of the Western Sea? At this they would only shrug their shoulders. Should he tell them of the unseen forces that drew him to that wonderful land of the West—where the crisp clear air held an intoxicating quality unknown in the East; where the eye foamed on and on over limitless expanses of waving green, till the mind was staggered at the vastness of the prospect; where the very largeness of nature seemed to enter into a man and to crush out things petty and selfish? In doing this he would be beating the air. They were incapable of understanding him. They would deem him mad.

Crushing down, therefore, both his enthusiasm for the western land and his anger at their dulness, he met the merchants of Montreal on their own commercial level. He told them that the posts he had established were in the very heart of the fur country; that the Assiniboines and Crees had engaged to bring large quantities of beaver skins to the forts; that the northern tribes were already turning from the English posts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Far North to the more accessible posts of the French; that the richly watered and wooded country between Kaministikwia and Lake Winnipeg abounded in every description of fur-bearing animal; that over the western prairies roamed the buffalo in vast herds which seemed to blacken the green earth as far as eye could reach. His eloquence over the outlook for trade proved convincing. As he painted the riches of the West in terms that appealed with peculiar force to these traders in furs, their hostility melted away. The prospect of profit at the rate of a hundred per cent once more filled them with enthusiasm. They agreed to equip the expedition anew. It thus happened that when the intrepid explorer again turned his face towards the West, fortune seemed to smile once more. His canoes were loaded with a second equipment for the posts of the Western Sea. Perhaps at that moment it seemed to him hardly to matter that he was in debt deeper than ever.

While in the East completing these arrangements, La Vérendrye took steps to ensure that his youngest son, Louis, now eighteen years of age, should join the other members of the family engaged in the work. The boy was to be taught how to prepare maps and plans, so that, when he came west in the following year, he might be of material assistance to the expedition. The explorer would then have his four sons and his nephew in the enterprise.

The hopeful outlook did not long endure. It was soon clear that La Vérendrye had again to meet trials which should try his mettle still more severely. Shortly after his return to Fort St Charles on the Lake of the Woods, his son Jean arrived from Fort Maurepas, with evil news indeed. La Jemeraye, his nephew and chief lieutenant, whose knowledge of the western tribes was invaluable, whose enthusiasm for the great project was only second to his own, whose patience and resourcefulness had helped the expedition out of many a tight corner—La Jemeraye was dead. He had remained in harness to the last, and had laboured day and night, in season and out of season, pushing explorations in every direction, meeting and conciliating the Indian tribes, building up the fur trade at the western posts. Though sorely needing rest, he had toiled on uncomplainingly, with no thought that he was showing heroism, till at last his overtaxed body collapsed and he died almost on his feet—the first victim of the search for the Western Sea.

Meanwhile the little garrison at Fort St Charles was almost at the point of starvation. La Vérendrye had travelled ahead at such rapid speed that his supplies were still a long way in the rear when he reached the fort. In face of the pressing need, it was decided to send a party down to meet the boats at Kaministikwia and to fetch back at once the supplies which were most urgently required. Jean, now twenty-three years of age, was placed in charge of the expedition, and with him went the Jesuit missionary, Father Aulneau, on his way down to Fort Michilimackinac. The day for departure was named, and everything was made ready the night before so that there might be no delay in starting early in the morning. The sun had hardly risen above the horizon and was yet filtering through the dense foliage of pine and cedar, when Jean de La Vérendrye and his men embarked and pushed off from the shore. The paddles dipped almost noiselessly, and the three light canoes skimmed lightly over the surface of the Lake of the Woods, followed by shouts of farewell from the fort.