He formed a partnership with a number of merchants and between and he was active building posts from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg promoting the fur trade and gathering information from Indigenous peoples. These accounts mentioned two rivers leading west. He planned the exploration of the Saskatchewan River but died before he could undertake it. From the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Remember me. He was disappointed in not acquiring any knowledge from them of the elusive western sea. The next 4 years saw little exploration except in the area north of the Assiniboine. During two of La Verendrye's sons made an extensive trip to the southwest, while he, in ill health, remained behind at Ft.
La Reine. The exact route of their travels is in dispute, but it is unlikely that they went beyond the Black Hills in present-day South Dakota. La Verendrye next turned his attention to the northwest and discovered the Saskatchewan River but lacked the resources to follow it to the Rocky Mountains. He returned to Quebec in to face his creditors and relinquished his command in the west. The following year he was promoted to the rank of captain and in was reinstated in his western command and authorized to continue his explorations.
La Verendrye's exploits were officially recognized in , when he was awarded the Cross of St. He died in Montreal on Dec. They had ascertained that the land mass was indented on the north and south by great gulfs: the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, the Gulf of California mer Vermeille to the southwest, and Hudson Bay mer glaciale to the north. The Gulf of California was known to connect with the Pacific and it was strongly suspected that Hudson Bay did so too.
Partly from this geographical pattern, partly from the information obtained from Indians, the French deduced the existence in the middle latitudes of the American continent of a gulf-like western sea mer du couchant which opened on the Pacific. The discovery of these non-existent waters became a matter of some urgency following the death of Louis XIV in Canadians were also interested in this discovery but for more practical reasons.
Executing the project, they anticipated, would require the establishment of a chain of posts in the northwest which would help reconstruct a furtrading network severely injured by the cession of Hudson Bay to the British in In the s the French still knew little about the Canadian interior — their point of farthest recorded penetration was Rainy Lake or Tekamamiouen , reached by Jacques de Noyon in — but a concept of the west was firmly established among those interested in questions of discovery and exploration.
It postulated the existence, somewhere in the interior, of a height of land or divide which could be reached via an eastward-flowing stream and which any explorer must eventually climb. There he would find the source of another river flowing into the western sea.
Data obtained by Noyon from Indian informants indicated that the Western Sea lay in the latitudes of Lake Winnipeg Ouinipigon , that the watershed was in the vicinity of Lake of the Woods, and that the westward-flowing stream was the Winnipeg Ouinipigon River.
It thus seemed that the western sea lay within easy distance of the border lakes the Rainy Lake—Lake of the Woods complex. From this advanced position some of his men could strike out for the western sea. La Noue erected a post at Kaministiquia but advanced no farther. Indian hostility held him back. Disappointed by his failure, the court, acting on the recommendation of Father Charlevoix , whom it had sent to America to make a personal study of the situation, decided to abandon the attempt to reach the western sea by way of the border lakes and to proceed instead from a base on the upper Mississippi.
While commanding at the poste du nord he questioned the Indians who came to trade about the land to the west and their answers convinced him that the route to the sea lay indeed through the border lakes and not the Mississippi valley country. A Cree chief named Pako, who had journeyed far into the unknown land, told him something about Lake Ouinipigon and the river system surrounding it. The slave of an elderly chief named Vieux Crapaud described in sketchy fashion the land of the Mandans.
Its chief improvement over previous ones was the location of the western sea, which no longer appears in the area of the Manitoba lakes but an undetermined distance to the west. Its chief weakness was the representation of Lake Ouinipigon not as the nub of a complex set of waterways but merely as an enlargement of the River of the West as the waterway the explorer sought came to be called.
Its chief riddle was the identity was it the Saskatchewan or the Nelson River? Once the French had a post on those waters they would be strategically located for their dash to the western sea. The next step was for him to win the French officials over to his plan.
This establishment would not only facilitate the discovery of the western sea but also greatly benefit French commerce since the area was rich in peltries, peltries which were at present going to the English on Hudson Bay through the Crees. The minister sanctioned the project although Charlevoix, to whom he referred it for comment, opposed the establishment of permanent posts which, he feared, would enable commerce to get the better of exploration.
The manner in which the expedition was organized did indeed greatly enlarge its commercial dimension. Between March and June a nine-man partnership made up of four distinct sub-partnerships was formed. Nothing was said in this nine-clause document about the discovery of the western sea. Meantime the commandant and his main body of people had retraced their steps to Kaministiquia where they settled for the winter. In the spring of the two groups rejoined and, accompanied by some 50 canoes of Crees and Assiniboins, moved on to Lake of the Woods from which the river of the west allegedly sprang.
In the spring of he sent La Jemerais and Jean-Baptiste on to Lake Ouinipigon to find a suitable location for the post he intended building there. Unfortunately his two lieutenants started out too soon from Fort Saint-Charles. Ice stalled their advance after they had descended the Ouinipigon River to within 15 or 20 leagues of the lake.
Almost immediately he was sent to Quebec by the commandant to present a report to Beauharnois on what had been accomplished to date. He reached Montreal on 20 September and from there went on to Quebec. Would the crown help finance the expedition by granting the partners 10, livres per annum during three years? This request was passed on to Maurepas for consideration. But when he turned from finance to other matters La Jemerais fairly brimmed with optimism.
Prevailing winds on Lake of the Woods were westerly and since they brought copious showers the sea could not be far off. Encouraged by this phenomenon he planned to start off in quest of this sea the following spring. He never discovered his ocean, but he had certainly increased the influence of the French in the central lake and prairie region of North America. He died at Montreal on 5 December He is commemorated by La Verendrye Park in Winnipeg.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. This is a collection of noteworthy Manitobans from the past, compiled by the Manitoba Historical Society. We acknowledge that the collection contains both reputable and disreputable people. All are worth remembering as a lesson to future generations.
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