Francis Parkman’s Works.
NEW LIBRARY EDITION.
VOL. VII.
[Illustration: Sir William Pepperrell.
_Copyright 1897 by Little, Brown, & C^o._
_Goupil & C^o. Paris._]
_Sir William Pepperrell._
From the painting by John Smibert.
A HALF CENTURY OF CONFLICT, II., _Frontispiece_
A HALF-CENTURY OF
CONFLICT.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN
NORTH AMERICA.
PART SIXTH.
BY
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1898.
_Copyright, 1892_,
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.
_Copyright, 1897_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVI.
1716-1761.
SEARCH FOR THE PACIFIC.
PAGE
The Western Sea.--Schemes for reaching it.--Journey of
Charlevoix.--The Sioux Mission.--Varennes de la Vérendrye:
his Enterprise; his Disasters; visits the Mandans; his Sons;
their Search for the Western Sea; their Adventures.--The
Snake Indians.--A Great War-party.--The Rocky Mountains.--A
Panic.--Return of the Brothers; their Wrongs and their Fate 3
CHAPTER XVII.
1700-1750.
THE CHAIN OF POSTS.
Opposing Claims.--Attitude of the Rival Nations.--America a
French Continent.--England a Usurper.--French Demands.--
Magnanimous Proposals.--Warlike Preparation.--Niagara.--
Oswego.--Crown Point.--The Passes of the West secured 44
CHAPTER XVIII.
1744, 1745.
A MAD SCHEME.
War of the Austrian Succession.--The French seize Canseau and
attack Annapolis.--Plan of Reprisal.--William Vaughan.--
Governor Shirley: he advises an Attack on Louisbourg.--The
Assembly refuses, but at last consents.--Preparation.--
William Pepperrell.--George Whitefield.--Parson Moody.--The
Soldiers.--The Provincial Navy.--Commodore Warren.--Shirley
as an Amateur Soldier.--The Fleet sails 59
CHAPTER XIX.
1745.
LOUISBOURG BESIEGED.
Seth Pomeroy.--The Voyage.--Canseau.--Unexpected Succors.--
Delays.--Louisbourg.--The Landing.--The Grand Battery
taken.--French Cannon turned on the Town.--Weakness of
Duchambon.--Sufferings of the Besiegers: their Hardihood;
their Irregular Proceedings.--Joseph Sherburn.--Amateur
Gunnery.--Camp Frolics.--Sectarian Zeal.--Perplexities of
Pepperrell 90
CHAPTER XX.
1745.
LOUISBOURG TAKEN.
A Rash Resolution.--The Island Battery.--The Volunteers.--The
Attack.--The Repulse.--Capture of the “Vigilant.”--A
Sortie.--Skirmishes.--Despondency of the French.--English
Camp threatened.--Pepperrell and Warren.--Warren’s
Plan.--Preparation for a General Attack.--Flag of
Truce.--Capitulation.--State of the Fortress.--Parson
Moody.--Soldiers dissatisfied.--Disorders.--Army and
Navy.--Rejoicings.--England repays Provincial Outlays 117
CHAPTER XXI.
1745-1747.
DUC D’ANVILLE.
Louisbourg after the Conquest.--Mutiny.--Pestilence.--Stephen
Williams: his Diary.--Scheme of Conquering Canada.--Newcastle’s
Promises.--Alarm in Canada.--Promises broken.--Plan against
Crown Point.--Startling News.--D’Anville’s Fleet.--Louisbourg
to be avenged.--Disasters of D’Anville.--Storm.--Pestilence.--
Famine.--Death of D’Anville.--Suicide of the Vice-Admiral.--
Ruinous Failure.--Return Voyage.--Defeat of La Jonquière 145
CHAPTER XXII.
1745-1747.
ACADIAN CONFLICTS.
Efforts of France.--Apathy of Newcastle.--Dilemma of Acadians:
their Character.--Danger of the Province.--Plans of
Shirley.--Acadian Priests.--Political Agitators.--Noble’s
Expedition.--Ramesay at Beaubassin.--Noble at Grand-Pré.--A
Winter March.--Defeat and Death of Noble.--Grand-Pré
reoccupied by the English.--Threats of Ramesay against the
Acadians.--The British Ministry will not protect them 169
CHAPTER XXIII.
1740-1747.
WAR AND POLITICS.
Governor and Assembly.--Saratoga destroyed.--William Johnson.--
Border Ravages.--Upper Ashuelot.--French “Military Movements.”--
Number Four.--Niverville’s Attack.--Phineas Stevens.--The
French repulsed 205
CHAPTER XXIV.
1745-1748.
FORT MASSACHUSETTS.
Frontier Defence.--Northfield and its Minister.--Military
Criticisms of Rev. Benjamin Doolittle.--Rigaud de Vaudreuil:
his Great War-party; he attacks Fort Massachusetts.--Sergeant
Hawks and his Garrison.--A Gallant Defence.--Capitulation.--
Humanity of the French.--Ravages.--Return to Crown Point.--
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 230
APPENDIX.
A. France claims all North America except the Spanish Colonies 257
B. French Views of the Siege of Louisbourg 274
C. Shirley’s Relations with the Acadians 312
INDEX 361
A HALF-CENTURY OF CONFLICT.
CHAPTER XVI.
1716-1761.
SEARCH FOR THE PACIFIC.
THE WESTERN SEA.--SCHEMES FOR REACHING IT.--JOURNEY OF
CHARLEVOIX.--THE SIOUX MISSION.--VARENNES DE LA VÉRENDRYE:
HIS ENTERPRISE; HIS DISASTERS; VISITS THE MANDANS; HIS SONS;
THEIR SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA; THEIR ADVENTURES.--THE
SNAKE INDIANS.--A GREAT WAR-PARTY.--THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.--A
PANIC.--RETURN OF THE BROTHERS; THEIR WRONGS AND THEIR FATE.
In the disastrous last years of Louis XIV. the court gave little
thought to the New World; but under the regency of the Duke of Orléans
interest in American affairs revived. Plans for reaching the Mer de
l’Ouest, or Pacific Ocean, were laid before the Regent in 1716. It was
urged that the best hope was in sending an expedition across the
continent, seeing that every attempt to find a westward passage by
Hudson Bay had failed. As starting-points and bases of supply for the
expedition, it was proposed to establish three posts, one on the north
shore of Lake Superior, at the mouth of the river Kaministiguia,
another at Lac des Cristineaux, now called Lake of the Woods, and the 4
third at Lake Winnipeg,--the last being what in American phrase is
called the “jumping-off place,” or the point where the expedition was
to leave behind the last trace of civilization. These posts were to
cost the Crown nothing; since by a device common in such cases, those
who built and maintained them were to be paid by a monopoly of the
fur-trade in the adjacent countries. It was admitted, however, that
the subsequent exploration must be at the charge of the government,
and would require fifty good men, at three hundred francs a year each,
besides equipment and supplies. All things considered, it was reckoned
that an overland way to the Pacific might be found for about fifty
thousand francs, or ten thousand dollars.[1]
The Regent approved the scheme so far as to order the preliminary step
to be taken by establishing the three posts, and in this same year,
Lieutenant La Noue, of the colony troops, began the work by building a
stockade at the mouth of the Kaministiguia. Little more was done in
furtherance of the exploration till three years later, when the
celebrated Jesuit, Charlevoix, was ordered by the Duke of Orléans to
repair to America and gain all possible information concerning the
Western Sea and the way to it.[2]
In the next year he went to the Upper Lakes, and questioned 5
missionaries, officers, _voyageurs_, and Indians. The results
were not satisfactory. The missionaries and the officers had nothing
to tell; the voyagers and Indians knew no more than they, but invented
confused and contradictory falsehoods to hide their ignorance.
Charlevoix made note of everything, and reported to the Comte de
Toulouse that the Pacific probably formed the western boundary of the
country of the Sioux, and that some Indians told him that they had
been to its shores and found white men there different from the
French.
Believing that these stories were not without foundation, Charlevoix
reported two plans as likely to lead to the coveted discovery. One was
to ascend the Missouri, “the source of which is certainly not far from
the sea, as all the Indians I have met have unanimously assured me;”
and the other was to establish a mission among the Sioux, from whom,
after thoroughly learning their language, the missionaries could, as
he thinks, gain all the desired information.[3]
The Regent approved the plan of the mission; but the hostile
disposition of the Sioux and the Outagamies prevented its execution
for several years. In 1727 the scheme was revived, and the colonial 6
minister at Versailles ordered the governor of Canada to send two
missionaries to the Sioux. But the mission required money, and the
King would not give it. Hence the usual expedient was adopted. A
company was formed, and invested with a monopoly of the Sioux
fur-trade, on condition of building a fort, mission-house, and chapel,
and keeping an armed force to guard them. It was specially provided
that none but pious and virtuous persons were to be allowed to join
the Company, “in order,” says the document, “to attract the
benediction of God upon them and their business.”[4] The prospects of
the Company were thought good, and the governor himself was one of the
shareholders. While the mission was given the most conspicuous place
in the enterprise, its objects were rather secular than spiritual,--to
attach the Sioux to the French interest by the double ties of religion
and trade, and utilize their supposed knowledge to reach the
Pacific.[5]
Father Guignas was made the head of the mission, and Boucher de la
Perrière the military chief. The party left Montreal in June, and,
journeying to the Mississippi by way of Michilimackinac, Green Bay,
Fox River, and the Wisconsin, went up the great river to Lake Pepin,
where the adventurous Nicolas Perrot had built two trading-posts more
than forty years before. Even if his time-worn tenements were still 7
standing, La Perrière had no thought of occupying them. On the north,
or rather west, side of the lake his men found a point of land that
seemed fit for their purpose, disembarked, cut down trees, and made a
square stockade enclosing the necessary buildings. It was near the end
of October before they were all well housed. A large band of Sioux
presently appeared, and set up their teepees hard by. When the
birthday of the governor came, the party celebrated it with a display
of fireworks and vociferous shouts of _Vive le Roi_, _Vive
Charles de Beauharnois_, while the Indians yelped in fright and
amazement at the pyrotechnics, or stood pressing their hands upon
their mouths in silent amazement. The French called their fort Fort
Beauharnois, and invited the aid of Saint Michael the Archangel by
naming the mission in his honor. All went well till April, when the
water rose with the spring floods and filled fort, chapel, and houses
to the depth of nearly three feet, ejecting the whole party, and
forcing them to encamp on higher ground till the deluge subsided.[6]
Worse enemies than the floods soon found them out. These were the
irrepressible Outagamies, who rose against the intruding French and
incited the Sioux to join them. There was no profit for the Company,
and no safety for its agents. The stockholders became discouraged, and
would not support the enterprise. The fort was abandoned, till in 1731
a new arrangement was made, followed by another attempt.[7] For a time 8
a prosperous trade was carried on; but, as commonly happened in such
cases, the adventurers seem to have thought more of utilizing their
monopoly than of fulfilling the terms on which they had received it.
The wild Sioux of the plains, instead of being converted and turned
into Frenchmen, proved such dangerous neighbors that, in 1737,
Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who then commanded the post, found himself
forced to abandon it.[8] The enterprise had failed in both its aims.
The Western Sea was still a mystery, and the Sioux were not friends,
but enemies. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre recommended that they should be
destroyed,--benevolent advice easy to give, and impossible to
execute.[9]
René Gaultier de Varennes, lieutenant in the regiment of Carignan,
married at Three Rivers, in 1667, the daughter of Pierre Boucher,
governor of that place; the age of the bride, Demoiselle Marie
Boucher, being twelve years, six months, and eighteen days. Varennes
succeeded his father-in-law as governor of Three Rivers, with a salary
of twelve hundred francs, to which he added the profits of a farm of
forty acres; and on these modest resources, reinforced by an illicit
trade in furs, he made shift to sustain the dignity of his office. His 9
wife became the mother of numerous offspring, among whom was Pierre,
born in 1685,--an active and hardy youth, who, like the rest of the
poor but vigorous Canadian _noblesse_, seemed born for the forest
and the fur-trade. When, however, the War of the Spanish Succession
broke out, the young man crossed the sea, obtained the commission of
lieutenant, and was nearly killed at the battle of Malplaquet, where
he was shot through the body, received six sabre-cuts, and was left
for dead on the field. He recovered, and returned to Canada, when,
finding his services slighted, he again took to the woods. He had
assumed the designation of La Vérendrye, and thenceforth his full name
was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye.[10]
In 1728, he was in command of a small post on Lake Nipigon, north of
Lake Superior. Here an Indian chief from the river Kaministiguia told
him of a certain great lake which discharged itself by a river flowing
westward. The Indian further declared that he had descended this river
till he reached water that ebbed and flowed, and, terrified by the
strange phenomenon, had turned back, though not till he had heard of a
great salt lake, bordered with many villages. Other Indians confirmed
and improved the story. “These people,” said La Vérendrye to the
Jesuit Degonnor, “are great liars, but now and then they tell the 10
truth.”[11] It seemed to him likely that their stories of a western
river flowing to a western sea were not totally groundless, and that
the true way to the Pacific was not, as had been supposed, through the
country of the Sioux, but farther northward, through that of the
Cristineaux and Assiniboins, or, in other words, through the region
now called Manitoba. In this view he was sustained by his friend
Degonnor, who had just returned from the ill-starred Sioux mission.
La Vérendrye, fired with the zeal of discovery, offered to search for
the Western Sea if the King would give him one hundred men and supply
canoes, arms, and provisions.[12] But, as was usual in such cases, the
King would give nothing; and though the governor, Beauharnois, did all
in his power to promote the enterprise, the burden and the risk were
left to the adventurer himself. La Vérendrye was authorized to find a
way to the Pacific at his own expense, in consideration of a monopoly
of the fur-trade in the regions north and west of Lake Superior. This
vast and remote country was held by tribes who were doubtful friends
of the French, and perpetual enemies of each other. The risks of the
trade were as great as its possible profits, and, to reap these, vast
outlays must first be made: forts must be built, manned, provisioned, 11
and stocked with goods brought through two thousand miles of difficult
and perilous wilderness. There were other dangers, more insidious, and
perhaps greater. The exclusive privileges granted to La Vérendrye
would inevitably rouse the intensest jealousy of the Canadian
merchants, and they would spare no effort to ruin him. Intrigue and
calumny would be busy in his absence. If, as was likely, his patron,
Beauharnois, should be recalled, the new governor might be turned
against him, his privileges might be suddenly revoked, the forts he
had built passed over to his rivals, and all his outlays turned to
their profit, as had happened to La Salle on the recall of his patron,
Frontenac. On the other hand, the country was full of the choicest
furs, which the Indians had hitherto carried to the English at Hudson
Bay, but which the proposed trading-posts would secure to the French.
La Vérendrye’s enemies pretended that he thought of nothing but
beaver-skins, and slighted the discovery which he had bound himself to
undertake; but his conduct proves that he was true to his engagements,
and that ambition to gain honorable distinction in the service of the
King had a large place among the motives that impelled him.
As his own resources were of the smallest, he took a number of
associates on conditions most unfavorable to himself. Among them they
raised money enough to begin the enterprise, and on the eighth of
June, 1731, La Vérendrye and three of his sons, together with his 12
nephew, La Jemeraye, the Jesuit Messager, and a party of Canadians,
set out from Montreal. It was late in August before they reached the
great portage of Lake Superior, which led across the height of land
separating the waters of that lake from those flowing to Lake
Winnipeg. The way was long and difficult. The men, who had perhaps
been tampered with, mutinied, and refused to go farther.[13] Some of
them, with much ado, consented at last to proceed, and, under the lead
of La Jemeraye, made their way by an intricate and broken chain of
lakes and streams to Rainy Lake, where they built a fort and called it
Fort St. Pierre. La Vérendrye was forced to winter with the rest of
the party at the river Kaministiguia, not far from the great portage.
Here months were lost, during which a crew of useless mutineers had to
be fed and paid; and it was not till the next June that he could get
them again into motion towards Lake Winnipeg.
This ominous beginning was followed by a train of disasters. His
associates abandoned him; the merchants on whom he depended for
supplies would not send them, and he found himself, in his own words,
“destitute of everything.” His nephew, La Jemeraye, died. The Jesuit
Auneau, bent on returning to Michilimackinac, set out with La
Vérendrye’s eldest son and a party of twenty Canadians. A few days
later, they were all found on an island in the Lake of the Woods, 13
murdered and mangled by the Sioux.[14] The Assiniboins and
Cristineaux, mortal foes of that fierce people, offered to join the
French and avenge the butchery; but a war with the Sioux would have
ruined La Vérendrye’s plans of discovery, and exposed to torture and
death the French traders in their country. Therefore he restrained
himself and declined the proffered aid, at the risk of incurring the
contempt of those who offered it.
Beauharnois twice appealed to the court to give La Vérendrye some
little aid, urging that he was at the end of his resources, and that a
grant of thirty thousand francs, or six thousand dollars, would enable
him to find a way to the Pacific. All help was refused, but La
Vérendrye was told that he might let out his forts to other traders,
and so raise means to pursue the discovery.
In 1740 he went for the third time to Montreal, where, instead of aid,
he found a lawsuit. “In spite,” he says, “of the derangement of my
affairs, the envy and jealousy of various persons impelled them to
write letters to the court insinuating that I thought of nothing but
making my fortune. If more than forty thousand livres of debt which I
have on my shoulders are an advantage, then I can flatter myself that
I am very rich. In all my misfortunes, I have the consolation of
seeing that M. de Beauharnois enters into my views, recognizes the 14
uprightness of my intentions, and does me justice in spite of
opposition.”[15]
Meanwhile, under all his difficulties, he had explored a vast region
hitherto unknown, diverted a great and lucrative fur-trade from the
English at Hudson Bay, and secured possession of it by six fortified
posts,--Fort St. Pierre, on Rainy Lake; Fort St. Charles, on the Lake
of the Woods; Fort Maurepas, at the mouth of the river Winnipeg; Fort
Bourbon, on the eastern side of Lake Winnipeg; Fort La Reine, on the
Assiniboin; Fort Dauphin, on Lake Manitoba. Besides these he built
another post, called Fort Rouge, on the site of the city of Winnipeg;
and, some time after, another, at the mouth of the river Poskoiac, or
Saskatchewan, neither of which, however, was long occupied. These
various forts were only stockade works flanked with blockhouses; but
the difficulty of building and maintaining them in this remote
wilderness was incalculable.[16]
He had inquired on all sides for the Pacific. The Assiniboins could 15
tell him nothing. Nor could any information be expected from them,
since their relatives and mortal enemies, the Sioux, barred their way
to the West. The Cristineaux were equally ignorant; but they supplied
the place of knowledge by invention, and drew maps, some of which seem
to have been made with no other intention than that of amusing
themselves by imposing on the inquirer. They also declared that some
of their number had gone down a river called White River, or River of
the West, where they found a plant that shed drops like blood, and saw
serpents of prodigious size. They said further that on the lower part
of this river were walled towns, where dwelt white men who had knives,
hatchets, and cloth, but no firearms.[17]
Both Assiniboins and Cristineaux declared that there was a distant
tribe on the Missouri, called Mantannes (Mandans), who knew the way to
the Western Sea, and would guide him to it. Lured by this assurance,
and feeling that he had sufficiently secured his position to enable
him to begin his western exploration, La Vérendrye left Fort La Reine
in October, 1738, with twenty men, and pushed up the river Assiniboin
till its rapids and shallows threatened his bark canoes with
destruction. Then, with a band of Assiniboin Indians who had joined
him, he struck across the prairie for the Mandans, his Indian 16
companions hunting buffalo on the way. They approached the first
Mandan village on the afternoon of the third of December, displaying a
French flag and firing three volleys as a salute. The whole population
poured out to see the marvellous visitors, who were conducted through
the staring crowd to the lodge of the principal chief,--a capacious
structure so thronged with the naked and greasy savages that the
Frenchmen were half smothered. What was worse, they lost the bag that
held all their presents for the Mandans, which was snatched away in
the confusion, and hidden in one of the _caches_, called cellars by
La Vérendrye, of which the place was full. The chief seemed much
discomposed at this mishap, and explained it by saying that there were
many rascals in the village. The loss was serious, since without the
presents nothing could be done. Nor was this all; for in the morning
La Vérendrye missed his interpreter, and was told that he had fallen
in love with an Assiniboin girl and gone off in pursuit of her. The
French were now without any means of communicating with the Mandans,
from whom, however, before the disappearance of the interpreter, they
had already received a variety of questionable information, chiefly
touching white men cased in iron who were said to live on the river
below at the distance of a whole summer’s journey. As they were
impervious to arrows,--so the story ran,--it was necessary to shoot
their horses, after which, being too heavy to run, they were easily
caught. This was probably suggested by the armor of the Spaniards, who 17
had more than once made incursions as far as the lower Missouri; but
the narrators drew on their imagination for various additional
particulars.
The Mandans seem to have much declined in numbers during the century
that followed this visit of La Vérendrye. He says that they had six
villages on or near the Missouri, of which the one seen by him was the
smallest, though he thinks that it contained a hundred and thirty
houses.[18] As each of these large structures held a number of
families, the population must have been considerable. Yet when Prince
Maximilian visited the Mandans in 1833, he found only two villages,
containing jointly two hundred and forty warriors and a total
population of about a thousand souls. Without having seen the
statements of La Vérendrye, he speaks of the population as greatly
reduced by wars and the small-pox,--a disease which a few years later
nearly exterminated the tribe.[19]
La Vérendrye represents the six villages as surrounded with ditches 18
and stockades, flanked by a sort of bastion,--defences which, he says,
had nothing savage in their construction. In later times the
fortifications were of a much ruder kind, though Maximilian represents
them as having pointed salients to serve as bastions. La Vérendrye
mentions some peculiar customs of the Mandans which answer exactly to
those described by more recent observers.
He had intended to winter with the tribe; but the loss of the presents
and the interpreter made it useless to stay, and, leaving two men in
the village to learn the language, he began his return to Fort La
Reine. “I was very ill,” he writes, “but hoped to get better on the
way. The reverse was the case, for it was the depth of winter. It
would be impossible to suffer more than I did. It seemed that nothing
but death could release us from such miseries.” He reached Fort La
Reine on the eleventh of February, 1739.
His iron constitution seems to have been severely shaken; but he had
sons worthy of their father. The two men left among the Mandans
appeared at Fort La Reine in September. They reported that they had
been well treated, and that their hosts had parted from them with
regret. They also declared that at the end of spring several Indian 19
tribes, all well supplied with horses, had come, as was their yearly
custom, to the Mandan villages to barter embroidered buffalo hides and
other skins for corn and beans; that they had encamped, to the number
of two hundred lodges, on the farther side of the Missouri, and that
among them was a band said to have come from a distant country towards
the sunset, where there were white men who lived in houses built of
bricks and stones.
The two Frenchmen crossed over to the camp of these western strangers,
among whom they found a chief who spoke, or professed to speak, the
language of the mysterious white men, which to the two Frenchmen was
unintelligible. Fortunately, he also spoke the language of the
Mandans, of which the Frenchmen had learned a little during their
stay, and hence were able to gather that the white men in question had
beards, and that they prayed to the Master of Life in great houses,
built for the purpose, holding books, the leaves of which were like
husks of Indian corn, singing together and repeating _Jésus, Marie_.
The chief gave many other particulars, which seemed to show that he
had been in contact with Spaniards,--probably those of California; for
he described their houses as standing near the great lake, of which
the water rises and falls and is not fit to drink. He invited the two
Frenchmen to go with him to this strange country, saying that it could
be reached before winter, though a wide circuit must be made, to avoid 20
a fierce and dangerous tribe called Snake Indians (_Gens du
Serpent_).[20]
On hearing this story, La Vérendrye sent his eldest son, Pierre, to
pursue the discovery with two men, ordering him to hire guides among
the Mandans and make his way to the Western Sea. But no guides were to
be found, and in the next summer the young man returned from his
bootless errand.[21]
Undaunted by this failure, Pierre set out again in the next spring,
1742, with his younger brother, the Chevalier de la Vérendrye.
Accompanied only by two Canadians, they left Fort La Reine on the
twenty-ninth of April, and following, no doubt, the route of the
Assiniboin and Mouse River, reached the chief village of the Mandans
in about three weeks.
Here they found themselves the welcome guests of this singularly
interesting tribe, ruined by the small-pox nearly half a century ago,
but preserved to memory by the skilful pencil of the artist Charles
Bodmer, and the brush of the painter George Catlin, both of whom saw
them at a time when they were little changed in habits and manners
since the visit of the brothers La Vérendrye.[22]
Thus, though the report of the two brothers is too concise and brief, 21
we know what they saw when they entered the central area, or public
square, of the village. Around stood the Mandan lodges, looking like
round flattened hillocks of earth, forty or fifty feet wide. On
examination they proved to be framed of strong posts and poles,
covered with a thick matting of intertwined willow-branches, over
which was laid a bed of well-compacted clay or earth two or three feet
thick. This heavy roof was supported by strong interior posts.[23] The
open place which the dwellings enclosed served for games, dances, and
the ghastly religious or magical ceremonies practised by the tribe.
Among the other structures was the sacred “medicine lodge,”
distinguished by three or four tall poles planted before it, each
surmounted by an effigy looking much like a scarecrow, and meant as an
offering to the spirits.
If the two travellers had been less sparing of words, they would
doubtless have told us that as they entered the village square the
flattened earthen domes that surrounded it were thronged with squaws
and children,--for this was always the case on occasions of public 22
interest,--and that they were forced to undergo a merciless series of
feasts in the lodges of the chiefs. Here, seated by the sunken hearth
in the middle, under the large hole in the roof that served both for
window and chimney, they could study at their ease the domestic
economy of their entertainers. Each lodge held a _gens_, or
family connection, whose beds of raw buffalo hide, stretched on poles,
were ranged around the circumference of the building, while by each
stood a post on which hung shields, lances, bows, quivers,
medicine-bags, and masks formed of the skin of a buffalo’s head, with
the horns attached, to be used in the magic buffalo dance.
Every day had its sports to relieve the monotony of savage existence,
the game of the stick and the rolling ring, the archery practice of
boys, horse-racing on the neighboring prairie, and incessant games of
chance; while every evening, in contrast to these gayeties, the long,
dismal wail of women rose from the adjacent cemetery, where the dead
of the village, sewn fast in buffalo hides, lay on scaffolds above the
reach of wolves.
[Illustration: PARTS OF MONTANA AND NORTH DAKOTA,
showing approximately the ROUTE of
CHEVALIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE
in 1742, 1743.]
The Mandans did not know the way to the Pacific, but they told the
brothers that they expected a speedy visit from a tribe or band called
Horse Indians, who could guide them thither. It is impossible to
identify this people with any certainty.[24] The two travellers
waited for them in vain till after midsummer, and then, as the season 23
was too far advanced for longer delay, they hired two Mandans to
conduct them to their customary haunts.
They set out on horseback, their scanty baggage and their stock of
presents being no doubt carried by pack-animals. Their general course
was west-southwest, with the Black Hills at a distance on their left,
and the upper Missouri on their right. The country was a rolling
prairie, well covered for the most part with grass, and watered by
small alkaline streams creeping towards the Missouri with an opaque,
whitish current. Except along the watercourses, there was little or no
wood. “I noticed,” says the Chevalier de la Vérendrye, “earths of
different colors, blue, green, red, or black, white as chalk, or
yellowish like ochre.” This was probably in the “bad lands” of the
Little Missouri, where these colored earths form a conspicuous feature
in the bare and barren bluffs, carved into fantastic shapes by the
storms.[25]
For twenty days the travellers saw no human being, so scanty was the
population of these plains. Game, however, was abundant. Deer sprang
from the tall, reedy grass of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by 24
in ponderous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with
their grazing thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity of
their species, to gaze at the passing horsemen, then fled like the
wind; and as they neared the broken uplands towards the Yellowstone,
they saw troops of elk and flocks of mountain-sheep. Sometimes, for
miles together, the dry plain was studded thick with the earthen
mounds that marked the burrows of the curious marmots, called
prairie-dogs, from their squeaking bark. Wolves, white and gray,
howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the coyote, seated
in the dusk of evening upright on the grass, with nose turned to the
sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a score of
petulant voices were pouring together from the throat of one small
beast.
On the eleventh of August, after a march of about three weeks, the
brothers reached a hill, or group of hills, apparently west of the
Little Missouri, and perhaps a part of the Powder River Range. It was
here that they hoped to find the Horse Indians, but nobody was to be
seen. Arming themselves with patience, they built a hut, made fires to
attract by the smoke any Indians roaming near, and went every day to
the tops of the hills to reconnoitre. At length, on the fourteenth of
September, they descried a spire of smoke on the distant prairie.
One of their Mandan guides had left them and gone back to his village.
The other, with one of the Frenchmen, went towards the smoke, and 25
found a camp of Indians, whom the journal calls Les Beaux Hommes, and
who were probably Crows, or Apsaroka, a tribe remarkable for stature
and symmetry, who long claimed that region as their own. They treated
the visitors well, and sent for the other Frenchmen to come to their
lodges, where they were received with great rejoicing. The remaining
Mandan, however, became frightened,--for the Beaux Hommes were enemies
of his tribe,--and he soon followed his companion on his solitary
march homeward.
The brothers remained twenty-one days in the camp of the Beaux Hommes,
much perplexed for want of an interpreter. The tribes of the plains
have in common a system of signs by which they communicate with each
other, and it is likely that the brothers had learned it from the
Sioux or Assiniboins, with whom they had been in familiar intercourse.
By this or some other means they made their hosts understand that they
wished to find the Horse Indians; and the Beaux Hommes, being soothed
by presents, offered some of their young men as guides. They set out
on the ninth of October, following a south-southwest course.[26]
In two days they met a band of Indians, called by them the Little 26
Foxes, and on the fifteenth and seventeenth two villages of another
unrecognizable horde, named Pioya. From La Vérendrye’s time to our
own, this name “villages” has always been given to the encampments of
the wandering people of the plains. All these nomadic communities
joined them, and they moved together southward, till they reached at
last the lodges of the long-sought Horse Indians. They found them in
the extremity of distress and terror. Their camp resounded with howls
and wailings; and not without cause, for the Snakes, or Shoshones,--a
formidable people living farther westward,--had lately destroyed most
of their tribe. The Snakes were the terror of that country. The
brothers were told that the year before they had destroyed seventeen
villages, killing the warriors and old women, and carrying off the
young women and children as slaves.
None of the Horse Indians had ever seen the Pacific; but they knew a
people called Gens de l’Arc, or Bow Indians, who, as they said, had
traded not far from it. To the Bow Indians, therefore, the brothers
resolved to go, and by dint of gifts and promises they persuaded their
hosts to show them the way. After marching southwestward for several
days, they saw the distant prairie covered with the pointed
buffalo-skin lodges of a great Indian camp. It was that of the Bow
Indians, who may have been one of the bands of the western Sioux,--the
predominant race in this region. Few or none of them could ever have 27
seen a white man, and we may imagine their amazement at the arrival of
the strangers, who, followed by staring crowds, were conducted to the
lodge of the chief. “Thus far,” says La Vérendrye, “we had been well
received in all the villages we had passed; but this was nothing
compared with the courteous manners of the great chief of the Bow
Indians, who, unlike the others, was not self-interested in the least,
and who took excellent care of everything belonging to us.”
The first inquiry of the travellers was for the Pacific; but neither
the chief nor his tribesmen knew anything of it, except what they had
heard from Snake prisoners taken in war. The Frenchmen were surprised
at the extent of the camp, which consisted of many separate bands. The
chief explained that they had been summoned from far and near for a
grand war-party against that common foe of all,--the Snakes.[27] In
fact, the camp resounded with war-songs and war-dances. “Come with
us,” said their host; “we are going towards the mountains, where you
can see the great water that you are looking for.”
At length the camp broke up. The squaws took down the lodges, and the
march began over prairies dreary and brown with the withering touch 28
of autumn. The spectacle was such as men still young have seen in
these western lands, but which no man will see again. The vast plain
swarmed with the moving multitude. The tribes of the Missouri and the
Yellowstone had by this time abundance of horses, the best of which
were used for war and hunting, and the others as beasts of burden.
These last were equipped in a peculiar manner. Several of the long
poles used to frame the teepees, or lodges, were secured by one end to
each side of a rude saddle, while the other end trailed on the ground.
Crossbars lashed to the poles just behind the horse kept them three or
four feet apart, and formed a firm support, on which was laid,
compactly folded, the buffalo-skin covering of the lodge. On this,
again, sat a mother with her young family, sometimes stowed for safety
in a large open willow basket, with the occasional addition of some
domestic pet,--such as a tame raven, a puppy, or even a small
bear-cub. Other horses were laden in the same manner with wooden
bowls, stone hammers, and other utensils, along with stores of dried
buffalo-meat packed in cases of rawhide whitened and painted. Many of
the innumerable dogs--whose manners and appearance strongly suggested
their relatives the wolves, to whom, however, they bore a mortal
grudge--were equipped in a similar way, with shorter poles and lighter
loads. Bands of naked boys, noisy and restless, roamed the prairie,
practising their bows and arrows on any small animal they might find. 29
Gay young squaws--adorned on each cheek with a spot of ochre or red
clay, and arrayed in tunics of fringed buckskin embroidered with
porcupine quills--were mounted on ponies, astride like men; while lean
and tattered hags--the drudges of the tribe, unkempt and
hideous--scolded the lagging horses, or screeched at the disorderly
dogs, with voices not unlike the yell of the great horned owl. Most of
the warriors were on horseback, armed with round white shields of
bull-hide, feathered lances, war-clubs, bows, and quivers filled with
stone-headed arrows; while a few of the elders, wrapped in robes of
buffalo-hide, stalked along in groups with a stately air, chatting,
laughing, and exchanging unseemly jokes.[28]
“We continued our march,” says La Vérendrye, “sometimes
south-southwest, and now and then northwest; our numbers constantly
increasing by villages of different tribes which joined us.” The
variations of their course were probably due to the difficulties of
the country, which grew more rugged as they advanced, with broken
hills, tracts of dingy green sage-bushes, and bright, swift streams,
edged with cottonwood and willow, hurrying northward to join the
Yellowstone. At length, on the first of January, 1743, they saw what
was probably the Bighorn Range of the Rocky Mountains, a hundred and 30
twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park.
A council of all the allied bands was now called, and the Frenchmen
were asked to take part in it. The questions discussed were how to
dispose of the women and children, and how to attack the enemy. Having
settled their plans, the chiefs begged their white friends not to
abandon them; and the younger of the two, the Chevalier, consented to
join the warriors, and aid them with advice, though not with arms.
The tribes of the western plains rarely go on war-parties in winter,
and this great expedition must have been the result of unusual
exasperation. The object was to surprise the Snakes in the security of
their winter camp, and strike a deadly blow, which would have been
impossible in summer.
On the eighth of January the whole body stopped to encamp, choosing,
no doubt, after the invariable winter custom of western Indians, a
place sheltered from wind, and supplied with water and fuel. Here the
squaws and children were to remain, while most of the warriors
advanced against the enemy. By pegging the lower edge of the
lodge-skin to the ground, and piling a ridge of stones and earth upon
it to keep out the air, fastening with wooden skewers the flap of hide
that covered the entrance, and keeping a constant fire, they could
pass a winter endurable to Indians, though smoke, filth, vermin, bad
air, the crowd, and the total absence of privacy, would make it a 31
purgatory to any civilized white man.
The Chevalier left his brother to watch over the baggage of the party,
which was stored in the lodge of the great chief, while he himself,
with his two Canadians, joined the advancing warriors. They were on
horseback, marching with a certain order, and sending watchmen to
reconnoitre the country from the tops of the hills.[29] Their
movements were so slow that it was twelve days before they reached the
foot of the mountains, which, says La Vérendrye, “are for the most
part well wooded, and seem very high.”[30] He longed to climb their
great snow-encumbered peaks, fancying that he might then see the
Pacific, and never dreaming that more than eight hundred miles of
mountains and forests still lay between him and his goal.
Through the whole of the present century the villages of the Snakes
were at a considerable distance west of the Bighorn Range, and some of
them were even on the upper waters of the Pacific slope. It is likely
that they were so in 1743, in which case the war-party would not have
only reached the Bighorn Mountains, but have pushed farther on to
within sight of the great Wind River Range. Be this as it may, their
scouts reached the chief winter camp of the Snakes, and found it 32
abandoned, with lodges still standing, and many household possessions
left behind. The enemy had discovered their approach, and fled.
Instead of encouraging the allies, this news filled them with terror,
for they feared that the Snake warriors might make a circuit to the
rear, and fall upon the camp where they had left their women and
children. The great chief spent all his eloquence in vain, nobody
would listen to him; and with characteristic fickleness they gave over
the enterprise, and retreated in a panic. “Our advance was made in
good order; but not so our retreat,” says the Chevalier’s journal.
“Everybody fled his own way. Our horses, though good, were very tired,
and got little to eat.” The Chevalier was one day riding with his
friend, the great chief, when, looking behind him, he missed his two
French attendants. Hastening back in alarm, he found them far in the
rear, quietly feeding their horses under the shelter of a clump of
trees. He had scarcely joined them when he saw a party of fifteen
hostile Indians stealthily creeping forward, covered by their
bull-hide shields. He and his men let them approach, and then gave
them a few shots; on which they immediately ran off, firearms being to
them an astounding novelty.
The three Frenchmen now tried to rejoin the great chief and his band,
but the task was not easy. The prairie, bare of snow and hard as
flint, showed no trace of foot or hoof; and it was by rare good
fortune that they succeeded, on the second day, not in overtaking
the chief, but in reaching the camp where the women and children had 33
been left. They found them all in safety; the Snakes had not attacked
them, and the panic of the warriors was needless. It was the ninth of
February. They were scarcely housed when a blizzard set in, and on the
night of the tenth the plains were buried in snow. The great chief had
not appeared. With such of his warriors as he could persuade to follow
him, he had made a wide circuit to find the trail of the lost
Frenchmen, but, to his great distress, had completely failed. It was
not till five days after the arrival of the Chevalier and his men that
the chief reached the camp, “more dead than alive,” in the words of
the journal. All his hardships were forgotten when he found his white
friends safe, for he had given them up for lost. “His sorrow turned to
joy, and he could not give us attention and caresses enough.”
The camp broke up, and the allied bands dispersed. The great chief and
his followers moved slowly through the snowdrifts towards the
east-southeast, accompanied by the Frenchmen. Thus they kept on till
the first of March, when the two brothers, learning that they were
approaching the winter village of a people called Gens de la Petite
Cerise, or Choke-Cherry Indians, sent one of their men, with a guide,
to visit them. The man returned in ten days, bringing a message from
the Choke-Cherry Indians, inviting the Frenchmen to their lodges.
The great chief of the Bow Indians, who seems to have regarded his 34
young friends with mingled affection, respect, and wonder, was grieved
at the thought of losing them, but took comfort when they promised to
visit him again, provided that he would make his abode near a certain
river which they pointed out. To this he readily agreed, and then,
with mutual regret, they parted.[31] The Frenchmen repaired to the
village of the Choke-Cherry Indians, who, like the Bow Indians, were
probably a band of Sioux.[32] Hard by their lodges, which stood near
the Missouri, the brothers buried a plate of lead graven with the
royal arms, and raised a pile of stones in honor of the governor of
Canada. They remained at this place till April; then, mounting their
horses again, followed the Missouri upward to the village of the
Mandans, which they reached on the eighteenth of May. After spending a
week here, they joined a party of Assiniboins, journeyed with them
towards Fort La Reine, and reached it on the second of July,--to the
great relief of their father, who was waiting in suspense, having 35
heard nothing of them for more than a year.
Sixty-two years later, when the vast western regions then called
Louisiana had just been ceded to the United States, Captains Lewis and
Clark left the Mandan villages with thirty-two men, traced the
Missouri to the mountains, penetrated the wastes beyond, and made
their way to the Pacific. The first stages of that remarkable
exploration were anticipated by the brothers La Vérendrye. They did
not find the Pacific, but they discovered the Rocky Mountains, or at
least the part of them to which the name properly belongs; for the
southern continuation of the great range had long been known to the
Spaniards. Their bold adventure was achieved, not at the charge of a
government, but at their own cost and that of their father,--not with
a band of well-equipped men, but with only two followers.
The fur-trading privilege which was to have been their compensation
had proved their ruin. They were still pursued without ceasing by the
jealousy of rival traders and the ire of disappointed partners. “Here
in Canada more than anywhere else,” the Chevalier wrote, some years
after his return, “envy is the passion _à la mode_, and there is
no escaping it.”[33] It was the story of La Salle repeated.
Beauharnois, however, still stood by them, encouraged and defended
them, and wrote in their favor to the colonial minister.[34] It was 36
doubtless through his efforts that the elder La Vérendrye was at last
promoted to a captaincy in the colony troops. Beauharnois was
succeeded in the government by the sagacious and able Galissonière,
and he too befriended the explorers. “It seems to me,” he wrote to the
minister, “that what you have been told touching the Sieur de la
Vérendrye, to the effect that he has been more busy with his own
interests than in making discoveries, is totally false, and, moreover,
that any officers employed in such work will always be compelled to
give some of their attention to trade, so long as the King allows them
no other means of subsistence. These discoveries are very costly, and
more fatiguing and dangerous than open war.”[35] Two years later, the
elder La Vérendrye received the cross of the Order of St. Louis,--an
honor much prized in Canada, but which he did not long enjoy; for he
died at Montreal in the following December, when on the point of again
setting out for the West.
His intrepid sons survived, and they were not idle. One of them, the
Chevalier, had before discovered the river Saskatchewan, and ascended
it as far as the forks.[36] His intention was to follow it to the
mountains, build a fort there, and thence push westward in another
search for the Pacific; but a disastrous event ruined all his hopes. 37
La Galissonière returned to France, and the Marquis de la Jonquière
succeeded him, with the notorious François Bigot as intendant. Both
were greedy of money,--the one to hoard, and the other to dissipate
it. Clearly there was money to be got from the fur-trade of Manitoba,
for La Vérendrye had made every preparation and incurred every
expense. It seemed that nothing remained but to reap where he had
sown. His commission to find the Pacific, with the privileges
connected with it, was refused to his sons, and conferred on a
stranger. La Jonquière wrote to the minister: “I have charged M. de
Saint-Pierre with this business. He knows these countries better than
any officer in all the colony.”[37] On the contrary, he had never seen
them. It is difficult not to believe that La Jonquière, Bigot, and
Saint-Pierre were partners in a speculation of which all three were to
share the profits.
The elder La Vérendrye, not long before his death, had sent a large
quantity of goods to his trading-forts. The brothers begged leave to
return thither and save their property from destruction. They declared
themselves happy to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre, and asked
for the use of only a single fort of all those which their father had
built at his own cost. The answer was a flat refusal. In short, they
were shamefully robbed. The Chevalier writes: “M. le Marquis de la
Jonquière, being pushed hard, and as I thought even touched, by my
representations, told me at last that M. de Saint-Pierre wanted nothing 38
to do with me or my brothers.” “I am a ruined man,” he continues. “I
am more than two thousand livres in debt, and am still only a second
ensign. My elder brother’s grade is no better than mine. My younger
brother is only a cadet. This is the fruit of all that my father, my
brothers, and I have done. My other brother, whom the Sioux murdered
some years ago, was not the most unfortunate among us. We must lose
all that has cost us so much, unless M. de Saint-Pierre should take
juster views, and prevail on the Marquis de la Jonquière to share
them. To be thus shut out from the West is to be most cruelly robbed
of a sort of inheritance which we had all the pains of acquiring, and
of which others will get all the profit.”[38]
His elder brother writes in a similar strain: “We spent our youth and
our property in building up establishments so advantageous to Canada;
and, after all, we were doomed to see a stranger gather the fruit we
had taken such pains to plant.” And he complains that their goods left
in the trading-posts were wasted, their provisions consumed, and the
men in their pay used to do the work of others.[39]
They got no redress. Saint-Pierre, backed by the governor and the
intendant, remained master of the position. The brothers sold a small
piece of land, their last remaining property, to appease their most 39
pressing creditors.[40]
Saint-Pierre set out for Manitoba on the fifth of June, 1750. Though
he had lived more or less in the woods for thirty-six years, and
though La Jonquière had told the minister that he knew the countries
to which he was bound better than anybody else, it is clear from his
own journal that he was now visiting them for the first time. They did
not please him. “I was told,” he says, “that the way would grow harder
and more dangerous as we advanced, and I found, in fact, that one must
risk life and property every moment.” Finding himself and his men
likely to starve, he sent some of them, under an ensign named
Niverville, to the Saskatchewan. They could not reach it, and nearly
perished on the way. “I myself was no more fortunate,” says
Saint-Pierre. “Food was so scarce that I sent some of my people into
the woods among the Indians,--which did not save me from a fast so
rigorous that it deranged my health and put it out of my power to do
anything towards accomplishing my mission. Even if I had had strength
enough, the war that broke out among the Indians would have made it
impossible to proceed.”
Niverville, after a winter of misery, tried to fulfil an order which 40
he had received from his commander. When the Indians guided the two
brothers La Vérendrye to the Rocky Mountains, the course they took
tended so far southward that the Chevalier greatly feared it might
lead to Spanish settlements; and he gave it as his opinion that the
next attempt to find the Pacific should be made farther towards the
north. Saint-Pierre had agreed with him, and had directed Niverville
to build a fort on the Saskatchewan, three hundred leagues above its
mouth. Therefore, at the end of May, 1751, Niverville sent ten men in
two canoes on this errand, and they ascended the Saskatchewan to what
Saint-Pierre calls the “Rock Mountain.” Here they built a small
stockade fort and called it Fort La Jonquière. Niverville was to have
followed them; but he fell ill, and lay helpless at the mouth of the
river in such a condition that he could not even write to his
commander.
Saint-Pierre set out in person from Fort La Reine for Fort La
Jonquière, over ice and snow, for it was late in November. Two
Frenchmen from Niverville met him on the way, and reported that the
Assiniboins had slaughtered an entire band of friendly Indians on whom
Saint-Pierre had relied to guide him. On hearing this he gave up the
enterprise, and returned to Fort La Reine. Here the Indians told him
idle stories about white men and a fort in some remote place towards
the west; but, he observes, “nobody could reach it without encountering
an infinity of tribes more savage than it is possible to imagine.”
He spent most of the winter at Fort La Reine. Here, towards the end of 41
February, 1752, he had with him only five men, having sent out the
rest in search of food. Suddenly, as he sat in his chamber, he saw the
fort full of armed Assiniboins, extremely noisy and insolent. He tried
in vain to quiet them, and they presently broke into the guard-house
and seized the arms. A massacre would have followed, had not
Saint-Pierre, who was far from wanting courage, resorted to an
expedient which has more than once proved effective on such occasions.
He knocked out the heads of two barrels of gunpowder, snatched a
firebrand, and told the yelping crowd that he would blow up them and
himself together. At this they all rushed in fright out of the gate,
while Saint-Pierre ran after them, and bolted it fast. There was great
anxiety for the hunters, but they all came back in the evening,
without having met the enemy. The men, however, were so terrified by
the adventure that Saint-Pierre was compelled to abandon the fort,
after recommending it to the care of another band of Assiniboins, who
had professed great friendship. Four days after he was gone they
burned it to the ground.
He soon came to the conclusion that farther discovery was impossible,
because the English of Hudson Bay had stirred up the western tribes to
oppose it. Therefore he set out for the settlements, and, reaching
Quebec in the autumn of 1753, placed the journal of his futile 42
enterprise in the hands of Duquesne, the new governor.[41]
Canada was approaching her last agony. In the death-struggle of the
Seven Years’ War there was no time for schemes of western discovery.
The brothers La Vérendrye sank into poverty and neglect. A little
before the war broke out, we find the eldest at the obscure Acadian
post of Beauséjour, where he wrote to the colonial minister a
statement of his services, which appears to have received no
attention. After the fall of Canada, the Chevalier de la Vérendrye, he
whose eyes first beheld the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains,
perished in the wreck of the ship “Auguste,” on the coast of Cape
Breton, in November, 1761.[42]
[1] _Mémoire fait et arresté par le Conseil de Marine, 3
Février, 1717; Mémoire du Roy, 26 Juin, 1717._
[2] _Charlevoix au Comte de Morville, 1 Avril, 1723._
[3] The valuable journal of Charlevoix’s western travels,
written in the form of letters, was published in connection
with his _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_. After his visit
to the Lakes, he went to New Orleans, intending to return in
the spring and continue his inquiries for the Western Sea;
but being unable to do this, he went back to France at the
end of 1722. The official report of his mission is contained
in a letter to the Comte de Toulouse, 20 January, 1723.
[4] _Traité de la Compagnie des Sioux, 6 Juin, 1727._
[5] On this scheme, _Vaudreuil et Bégon au Ministre, 4
Octobre, 1723_; _Longueuil et Bégon au Ministre, 31 Octobre,
1725_; _Beauharnois et Dupuy au Ministre, 25 Septembre,
1727_.
[6] _Guignas à Beauharnois, 28 Mai, 1728._
[7] _Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 25 Octobre, 1729;
Idem, 12 Octobre, 1731._
[8] _Relation du Sieur de Saint-Pierre, 14 Octobre, 1737._
[9] “Cet officier [Saint-Pierre] a ajouté qu’il seroit
avantageux de détruire cette nation.”--_Mémoire de
Beauharnois_, 1738.
[10] M. Benjamin Sulte has traced out the family history of
the Varennes in the parish registers of Three Rivers and
other trustworthy sources. See _Revue Canadienne_, x. 781,
849, 935.
[11] _Relation du Père Degonnor, Jésuite, Missionnaire des
Sioux, adressée à M. le Marquis de Beauharnois._
[12] _Relation de Degonnor; Beauharnois au Ministre,
1 Octobre, 1731._
[13] _Mémoire du Sieur de la Vérendrye du Sujet des
Établissements pour parvenir à la Découverte de la Mer de
l’Ouest_, in Margry, vi. 585.
[14] _Beauharnois au Ministre, 14 Octobre, 1736_;
_Relation du Massacre au Lac des Bois, en Juin, 1736_;
_Journal de la Vérendrye, joint à la lettre de M. de
Beauharnois du--Octobre, 1737_.
[15] _Mémoire du Sieur de la Vérendrye au Sujet des
Établissements pour parvenir à la Découverte de la Mer de
l’Ouest._
[16] _Mémoire en abrégé de la Carte qui représente les
Établissements faits par le Sieur de la Vérendrye et ses
Enfants_ (Margry, vi. 616); _Carte des Nouvelles Découvertes
dans l’Ouest du Canada dressée sur les Mémoires du M^r. de la
Vérendrye et donnée au Dépôt de la Marine par M. de la
Galissonnière_, 1750; Bellin, _Remarques sur la Carte de
l’Amérique_, 1755; Bougainville, _Mémoire sur l’État de la
Nouvelle France_, 1757.
Most of La Vérendrye’s forts were standing during the Seven
Years’ War, and were known collectively as _Postes de la
Mer de l’Ouest_.
[17] _Journal de la Vérendrye joint à la Lettre de
M. de Beauharnois du--Octobre, 1737._
[18] _Journal de La Vérendrye, 1738, 1739._ This journal,
which is ill-written and sometimes obscure, is printed in
Brymner, _Report on Canadian Archives_, 1889.
[19] Le Prince Maximilien de Wied-Neuwied, _Voyage dans
l’Intérieur de l’Amérique du Nord_, ii. 371, 372 (Paris,
1843). When Captains Lewis and Clark visited the Mandans in
1804, they found them in two villages, with about three
hundred and fifty warriors. They report that, about forty
years before, they lived in nine villages, the ruins of
which the explorers saw about eighty miles below the two
villages then occupied by the tribe. The Mandans had moved
up the river in consequence of the persecutions of the Sioux
and the small-pox, which had made great havoc among them.
_Expedition of Lewis and Clark_, i. 129 (ed. Philadelphia,
1814). These nine villages seem to have been above
Cannon-ball River, a tributary of the Missouri.
[20] _Journal du Sieur de la Vérendrye_, 1740, in Archives
de la Marine.
[21] _Mémoire du Sieur de la Vérendrye, joint à sa lettre
du 31 Octobre, 1744._
[22] Prince Maximilian spent the winter of 1832-33 near the
Mandan villages. His artist, with the instinct of genius,
seized the characteristics of the wild life before him, and
rendered them with admirable vigor and truth. Catlin spent a
considerable time among the Mandans soon after the visit of
Prince Maximilian, and had unusual opportunities of studying
them. He was an indifferent painter, a shallow observer, and
a garrulous and windy writer; yet his enthusiastic industry
is beyond praise, and his pictures are invaluable as
faithful reflections of aspects of Indian life which are
gone forever.
Beauharnois calls the Mandans _Blancs Barbus_, and says that
they have been hitherto unknown. _Beauharnois au Ministre,
14 Août, 1739._ The name Mantannes, or Mandans, is that
given them by the Assiniboins.
[23] The Minnetarees and other tribes of the Missouri built
their lodges in a similar way.
[24] The Cheyennes have a tradition that they were the first
tribe of this region to have horses. This may perhaps
justify a conjecture that the northern division of this
brave and warlike people were the Horse Indians of La
Vérendrye; though an Indian tradition, unless backed by
well-established facts, can never be accepted as substantial
evidence.
[25] A similar phenomenon occurs farther west on the face of
the perpendicular bluffs that, in one place, border the
valley of the river Rosebud.
[26] _Journal du Voyage fait par le Chevalier de la Vérendrye
en 1742._ The copy before me is from the original in the
Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine. A duplicate, in the Archives
des Affaires Étrangères, is printed by Margry. It gives the
above date as November 9 instead of October 9. The context
shows the latter to be correct.
[27] The enmity between the Sioux and the Snakes lasted
to our own time. When the writer lived among the western
Sioux, one of their chiefs organized a war-party against the
Snakes, and numerous bands came to join the expedition from
a distance in some cases of three hundred miles. Quarrels
broke out among them, and the scheme was ruined.
[28] The above descriptive particulars are drawn from
repeated observation of similar scenes at a time when the
primitive condition of these tribes was essentially
unchanged, though with the difference that the concourse of
savages counted by hundreds, and not by thousands.
[29] At least this was done by a band of Sioux with whom the
writer once traversed a part of the country ranged by these
same Snakes, who had lately destroyed an entire Sioux
village.
[30] The Bighorn Range, below the snow line, is in the main
well timbered with pine, fir, oak, and juniper.
[31] The only two tribes of this region who were a match for
the Snakes were the Sioux and the Blackfeet. It is clear
that the Bow Indians could not have been Blackfeet, as in
that case, after the war-party broke up, they would have
moved northward towards their own country, instead of
east-southeast into the country of their enemies. Hence I
incline to think the Bow Indians a band of Sioux, or
Dakota,--a people then, as since, predominant in that
country.
The banks of the Missouri, in the part which La Vérendrye
would have reached in following an east-southeast course,
were occupied by numerous bands or sub-tribes of Sioux, such
as the Minneconjou, Yankton, Oncpapa, Brulé, and others,
friends and relatives of the Bow Indians, supposing these to
have been Sioux.
[32] The Sioux, Cheyennes, and other prairie tribes use the
small astringent wild cherry for food. The squaws pound it,
stones and all, and then dry it for winter use.
[33] _Le Chevalier de la Vérendrye au Ministre, 30 Septembre,
1750._
[34] _La Vérendrye père au Ministre, 1 Novembre, 1746_, in
Margry, vi. 611.
[35] _La Galissonière au Ministre, 23 Octobre, 1747._
[36] _Mémoire en abrégé des Établissements et Découvertes
faits par le Sieur de la Vérendrye et ses Enfants._
[37] _La Jonquière au Ministre, 27 Février, 1750._
[38] _Le Chevalier de la Vérendrye au Ministre, 30 Septembre,
1750._
[39] _Mémoire des Services de Pierre Gautier de la Vérendrye
l’aisné, présenté à Mg^r. Rouillé, ministre et secrétaire
d’État._
[40] Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, in spite of his treatment of
the La Vérendrye brothers, had merit as an officer. It was
he who received Washington at Fort Le Bœuf in 1754. He was
killed in 1755, at the battle of Lake George. See “Montcalm
and Wolfe,” i. 315.
[41] _Journal sommaire du Voyage de Jacques Legardeur de
Saint-Pierre, chargé de là Découverte de la Mer de
l’Ouest_ (British Museum).
[42] The above narrative rests mainly on contemporary documents,
official in character, of which the originals are preserved
in the archives of the French Government. These papers have
recently been printed by M. Pierre Margry, late custodian of
the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, in the
sixth volume of his _Découvertes et Établissements des
Français dans l’Amérique Septentrionale_,--a documentary
collection of great value, published at the expense of the
American Government. It was M. Margry who first drew
attention to the achievements of the family of La Vérendrye,
by an article in the _Moniteur_ in 1852. I owe to his
kindness the opportunity of using the above-mentioned
documents in advance of publication. I obtained copies from
duplicate originals of some of the principal among them from
the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine, in 1872. These answer
closely, with rare and trivial variations, to the same
documents as printed from other sources by M. Margry. Some
additional papers preserved in the Archives of the Marine
and Colonies have also been used.
My friends, Hon. William C. Endicott, then Secretary of War,
and Captain John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, U. S. A., kindly
placed in my hands a valuable collection of Government maps
and surveys of the country between the Missouri and the
Rocky Mountains visited by the brothers La Vérendrye; and I
have received from Captain Bourke, and also from Mr. E. A.
Snow, formerly of the Third Cavalry, much information
concerning the same region, repeatedly traversed by them in
peace and war.
43