Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the choice of the Marquis de la Jonquiere to take up the search for the Western Sea in succession to the elder La Verendrye, himself went only as far as Fort La Reine.It was a subordinate, the Chevalier de Niverville, whom he sent farther west to find the great mountains and if possible the sea.The winter of 1750-51 had set in before Niverville was ready.He started apparently from Fort Maurepas, on snowshoes, his party dragging their supplies on toboggans.Before they reached Paskoya on the Saskatchewan (the modern Le Pas) they had nearly perished of hunger and were able to save their lives only by catching a few fish through the ice.Niverville was ill.He sent forward ten men by canoe up the Saskatchewan.They traveled with such rapidity that on May 29, 1751, they had reached the Rockies.They built a good fort, which they named Fort La Jonquiere, and stored it with a considerable quantity of provisions.If, as seems likely, the brothers La Verendrye saw only the Black Hills, these ten unknown men were the discoverers of the Rocky Mountains.
Saint-Pierre braced himself to set out for the distant goal but he was easily discouraged.Niverville, he said, was ill; the Indians were at war among themselves; some of them were plotting what Saint-Pierre calls "treason" to the French and their "perfidy" surpassed anything in his lifelong experience.The hostile influence of the English he thought all-pervasive.
Obviously these are excuses.He did not like the task and he turned back.As it was, he tells a dramatic story of how Indians crowded into Fort La Reine in a threatening manner and how he saved the fort and himself only by rushing to the magazine with a lighted torch, knocking open a barrel of powder, and threatening to blow up everything and everybody if the savages did not withdraw at once.He was eager to leave the country.In 1752 he handed over the command to St.Luc de la Come and, in August of that year, having experienced "much wretchedness" on his journeys, he was safely back in Montreal.The founding of Fort La Jonquiere was, no doubt, a great feat.Where the fort stood we do not know.It may have been on the North Saskatchewan, near Edmonton, or on the south branch of the river near Calgary.In any case it was a far-flung outpost of France.
The English had always been more prosaic than the French.The traders on Hudson Bay worked, indeed, under a monopoly not less rigorous than that which Canada imposed.Without doubt, many an Englishman on the Bay was haunted by the hope and desire to reach the Western Sea.But the servants of the Company knew that to buy and sell at a profit was their chief aim.They had been on the whole content to wait for trade to come to them.By 1740 the Indians, who made the long journey to the Bay by the intricate waters which carried to the sea the flood of the Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg, were showing to the English articles supplied by the French at points far inland.It thus became evident that the French were tapping the traffic in furs near its source and cutting off the stream which had long flowed to Hudson Bay.
In June, 1754, Anthony Hendry, a young man in the service of the Company, left York factory on Hudson Bay to find out what the French were doing.We have a slight but carefully written diary of Hendry's journey.He does not fail to note that in the summer weather life was made almost intolerable by the "musketoos."Traveling by canoe he reached the Saskatchewan River and tells how, on the 22d of July, he came to "a French house." It was Fort Paskoya.When Hendry paddled up to the river bank two Frenchmen met him and "in a very genteel manner" invited him into their house.With all courtesy they asked him, he says, if he had any letter from his master and where and on what design he was going inland.His answer was that he had been sent "to view the Country" and that he intended to return to Hudson Bay in the spring.The Frenchmen were sorry that their own master, who was apparently the well-known Canadian leader, St.Luc de la Corne, the successor of Saint-Pierre, had gone to Montreal with furs, and added their regrets that they must detain Hendry until this leader's return.At this Hendry's Indians grunted and said that the French dared not do so.Next day Hendry took breakfast and dinner at the fort, gave "two feet of tobacco" (at that time it was sold in long coils) to his hosts, and in return received some moose flesh.The confidence of his Indian guides that the French would not dare to detain him was justified.Next day Hendry paddled on up the river and advanced more than twenty miles, camping at night by "the largest Birch trees I have yet seen."Hendry wished to see the country thoroughly and to come into touch with the natives.The best way to do this and to obtain food was to leave the river and go boldly overland.He accordingly left his canoes behind and advanced on foot.The party was starving.On a Sunday in July he walked twenty-six miles and says "neither Bird nor Beast to be seen,--so that we have nothing to eat." The next day he traveled twenty-four miles on an empty stomach and then, to his delight, found a supply of ripe strawberries, "the size of black currants and the finest Iever eat." The next day his Indians killed two moose.He then met natives who, when he asked them to go to Hudson Bay to trade, replied that they could obtain all they needed from the French posts.The tact and skill of the French were such that, as Hendry admits, reluctantly enough, the Indians were already strongly attached to them.Day after day Hendry journeyed on over the rolling prairie in the warm summer days.He came to the south branch of the Saskatchewan near the point where now stands the city of Saskatoon and crossed the river on the 21st of August.
Then on to the West, eager to take part in the hunting of the buffalo.
