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. [Footnote:
_Relation du Sieur de Saint-Pierre, 14 Oct. 1737._] 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. [Footnote: "Cet officier [Saint-Pierre] a ajoute qu'il seroit
avantageux de detruire cette nation." _Memoire de Beauharnois, 1738._]
Rene 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 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 Verendrye, and thenceforth his full name was
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Verendrye. [Footnote: 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.]
In 1728, he was in command of a small post on Lake Nipegon, 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 Verendrye to the Jesuit Degonnor, "are great liars, but
now and then they tell the truth." [Footnote: _Relation du Pere Degonnor,
Jesuite, Missionnaire des Sioux, adressee a M. le Marquis de
Beauharnois_.] 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
Assinniboins, 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 Verendrye, 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. [Footnote: _Relation de Degonnor: Beauharnois au
Ministre, 1 Oct_. 1731.] 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