Analysis: Journal of the Expedition of the Chevalier de la Vérendrye

Date: 1743

Author: Vérendrye, Louis-Joseph Gaultier de la

Genre: Letter; report; diary

Summary Overview

The Chevalier de la Vérendrye’s Journal records observations and experiences with various American Indian tribes during an expedition in 1742 and 1743. In a fourteen-month period, Vérendrye traveled from Fort la Reine (present-day Portage la Prairie, Manitoba) into what became Wyoming. After sighting the Rocky Mountains, he returned home. There were several purposes for the venture. Vérendrye was to establish new partnerships among indigenous peoples while expanding trade west. At the same time, he was to promote alliances between the natives and France. A third goal was to scout out a route to the mythical Western Sea, which was supposed to connect with the Pacific Ocean, thus providing an economical passage to Asian markets. The Chevalier de la Vérendrye, from a family of explorers, was at various times a licensed and unlicensed fur trader and soldier. He addressed his report in the form of a letter to the marquis de Beauharnois, governor general of New France.

Document Analysis

The person to whom the Chevalier de la Vérendrye’s journal was addressed was French noble and longtime naval officer Charles de la Boische, marquis de Beauharnois, who served as governor of New France between 1726 and 1746.

During his tenure in office, Beauharnois was largely concerned with potential British incursions into French territory following the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Utrecht, which forbade him from applying military force. Beauharnois’s apprehension was reinforced in the mid-1720s by the construction and staffing of a British fort at Oswego (in present-day New York) on Lake Ontario, which was calculated to disrupt trade moving to and from Montreal via the Great Lakes to French posts at Niagara, Detroit, and farther west.

The French-British competition led to the sanctioned renewal of the dubious practice—first instituted one hundred years earlier—of trading liquor (rum from the British, brandy from the French) for furs with Indians, who had no tradition of using alcohol, nor resistance to its deleterious effects. Addiction to intoxicating beverages not only led to outbursts of violence directed at kin or elsewhere, but also became a major factor in the declining health of Indians, a cause of lower birth rates and higher death rates. The alcohol-induced depopulation among tribes who were regular trading partners forced the French and the British to seek fresh alliances farther west.

During the 1730s Beauharnois aggressively pursued the campaign against the Fox Indians disrupting French trade and had recalcitrant members of the tribe killed or enslaved. He strongly supported the efforts of Pierre de la Vérendrye in establishing working relationships with the Ojibwes, Assiniboines, and Crees—alliances that resulted in the 1736 murder of his son Jean-Baptise by the tribes’ enemy, the Sioux.

In the early 1740s, the Sioux were still a problem in the western parts of New France, and their hostility threatened the regular supply of beaver pelts upon which the colonial economy relied. To rectify the situation, Beauharnois commissioned Chevalier de la Vérendrye to undertake a journey to the west to create new alliances that, it was hoped, would restore the flow of furs. To aid in the establishment of profitable trading relationships, Beauharnois arranged for more than 140,000 livres’ worth of gifts that Vérendrye could use as incentive to create friendships among the Indians.

The Chevalier’s Journey

The first leg of the trip west began from Fort la Reine, one of the trading posts the Vérendrye family had built in the 1730s on the Assiniboine River north and west of Lake Superior (now Portage la Prairie, Manitoba). A three-week trek by land and water brought the Chevalier and his party, including his older brother François, to the country of the Mandans (whom Pierre de la Vérendrye had named during his expedition five years earlier), situated along the Heart River, a tributary of the Missouri River in present-day central North Dakota. A settled, Siouan-language tribe of some fifteen thousand members in nine villages, the Mandans had served as friendly intermediaries in the fur trade between the Indians and the French since 1738, and the Chevalier had visited them before.

After a two-month sojourn with the Mandans, during which he endeavored to learn enough native language to be able to communicate, the Chevalier recruited tribal guides—”Two very cheerfully offered”—to lead them to the country of the Cheyennes (“Gens des Chevaux”). As renowned travelers, the Cheyennes were presumed to be the best resource for information about viable routes to the West Coast. However, the migratory horsemen were not in evidence at their usual stopping places. Worse, the explorers did not encounter another westward-flowing river of sufficient volume that would support the theory of a northwest passage via water. Vérendrye’s observation of “earths of different colours” indicates the travelers probably reached the badlands of present-day western North Dakota, where a major Missouri River tributary, the Little Missouri, runs north and south.

Still searching for the Cheyennes west of the Little Missouri, Vérendrye next encountered members of the Absaroka, or Crow, tribe (“Beaux Hommes”). The fragile nature of intertribal relationships throughout the area was evident through the action of the Mandan guide, who asked to be excused from the parley. Through the liberal application of gifts—”considered great novelties” among natives who had not previously interacted with Europeans—Vérendrye hired new guides and continued traveling in a southwesterly direction, probably traversing parts of the present states of South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming while passing from tribe to tribe.

When Vérendrye did finally connect with the Cheyennes, they were in no shape to help since their enemies, the Shoshones (“Gens du Serpent”), had recently raided their villages and decimated the tribe. The explorers bargained to be led to the next-best option, the western Sioux (“Gens de l’Arc”), skilled bowmen who were enemies with the Shoshones.

Though Vérendrye lavishly praised the hospitality of the Sioux, he did not mention the name of the chief who so graciously received him. To the French explorer, the natives were merely a means to an end—a source of information about his ultimate goal of finding a way to the Western Sea. To appease his new acquaintance, the unnamed Sioux chief repeated unfounded rumors (or invented facts) about Vérendrye’s countrymen supposedly already settled in the area: “The French who are on the coast are numerous.” This was patently false information. While the English, the Spanish, even the Russians had put in appearances along the Pacific Northwest between the early sixteenth century and the time of Vérendrye’s expedition, the French did not arrive there until late in the eighteenth century.

The fanciful facts became apparent when the Sioux chief repeated phrases from the supposed French language, which Vérendrye realized were actually Spanish words. To confuse the issue further, the chief related a true incident of which Vérendrye had heard: the massacre of a Spanish military expedition under Lieutenant Colonel Pedro de Villasur sent from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to explore the Missouri River and rout French traders in the area. Vérendrye should certainly have been familiar with the event. In August 1720, French traders, in league with Pawnee and Otoe partners, had ambushed the Spanish at the Platte River, killed all but a few who escaped, and looted the bodies.

As Vérendrye continued his journey in a generally westerly direction into early 1743, the Indian tribes—attracted to the charming Chevalier, lured by the gifts the French distributed, and banding together for mutual protection from their common enemies, the Shoshones—decided to accompany him, swelling the exploratory party into the thousands. Though the natives attempted to encourage the French to join them in fighting their enemies, Vérendrye demurred: Beauharnois had given him the authority to create alliances, not to engage in war. Though annoyed at missing an opportunity to settle old scores, the assembled tribes in council agreed to forego attacking the Shoshones and smoked peace pipes with the French.

Soon afterward, reaching what is presumed to be the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Vérendrye wistfully considered climbing to the top of a peak to glimpse the Western Sea (the Pacific Ocean, still hundreds of miles distant, would have been invisible). However, with reports of marauding Shoshones in the area, the French and Indians retreated toward the east, and safety.

The Return and the Aftermath of the Expedition

Accompanied by the mass of Indians who had traveled west with him, the Chevalier began retracing his route. Separated from his French companions who lagged behind the main party, he galloped back and found his friends just as a band of Shoshones emerged from nearby woods, armed and ready to attack. The Frenchmen fired a few gunshots and the attackers retreated. In the following days, the French wandered eastward, finally catching up with their allies who, in fleeing from the Shoshones and searching for the missing Frenchmen, had scattered.

Finally reassembled, the French and Sioux continued east through snowstorms in early 1743. Reaching the Missouri River, where they encountered a band of Arikaras, the French took leave of the Sioux with promises to meet again, provided the tribe settled in the area so they could be easily found. The Chevalier and his companions stayed for several weeks with the Arikaras, learning that they were ironworkers who also traded in oxhides and slaves. Vérendrye heard of a French settler who had been living in the vicinity for several years and sent him a message via the Indians; he hoped to interrogate the man for information about the movements of any Spanish in the region, but the settler never responded or appeared.

To mark his passage, the Chevalier buried an inscribed lead tablet on a hill outside the Arikaras encampment (in present-day South Dakota). Then, borrowing several young warriors as guides, Vérendrye and his party headed north toward Mandan country. Traveling up the Missouri, they met members of the Prairie Sioux (“Gens de la Flèche Collée”) before reaching the Mandan village in the middle of May 1743. Hearing that a band of Assiniboines had just left for Fort la Reine, the Chevalier set out in pursuit, intending to travel with the Indians. He soon caught up, and they all headed north together. It was a fortuitous meeting. Soon after uniting, they came across a party of Sioux waiting in ambush; the Sioux, not expecting such a large group of travelers, retreated after a skirmish in which several Assiniboines were wounded.

Finally, after an absence of fourteen months, the Chevalier, his brother François, and the rest of the French explorers arrived again at Fort la Reine, where an anxious Pierre de la Vérendrye, having heard nothing of his sons since April 1742, greeted them with great joy.

Despite the time, effort, and expense of the expedition, the venture gained little of value for New France. Though they were the first Europeans to penetrate deep into the North American interior, they did not discover a water route leading to the mythical Western Sea. Nor was the area the Chevalier traversed—abundant in animal life, with great herds of commercially profitable buffalo—especially plentiful in beaver. As a result of the twin failures, the French abandoned the search for a northwest passage and focused their fur-trading efforts farther north, in the area around Lake Winnipeg. The Chevalier was unable to return to the vicinity of his travels or to keep the promises he had made to his allies.

Vérendrye’s Journal, though an important early chronicle documenting the contact between Europeans and Indians, raises more questions than it answers. The text contains few details or mentions of landmarks, so it is difficult to retrace the explorers’ footsteps. It is impossible to determine exactly how far west the Chevalier traveled—did he reach the Rocky Mountains or only get as far as the Black Hills? Because the nomadic Indian tribes are referred to colloquially and scarcely described, their leaders never named, they cannot be identified with any certainty.

The most valuable and detailed information about indigenous peoples contained in the Journal concerns the Mandans, the longtime trading partners of the French. Descendants of the tribe—much reduced in size from their mid-eighteenth-century population due to wars and epidemics—still dwell in their traditional homelands along the Missouri River in North Dakota. The Mandans continued to serve as trading partners to the French for another decade after Vérendrye’s visit, but by the 1760s, had switched their allegiances to the British coming southward from their newly obtained possession of New Canada and the Spanish coming north from their acquisition of Louisiana.

The Mandans also figured prominently in the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition to the West Coast, which had the same motivations as the Vérendrye journey more than sixty years earlier. The American explorers, gathering along the Missouri in preparation of their trek, met Sacagawea, a Shoshone captive of the Mandans who was married to French fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau. Sacagawea would become an invaluable guide and translator for the successful expedition of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.

One of the most interesting pieces of information contained in Vérendrye’s Journal concerns his burial of a memento of his journey: “I deposited on an eminence near the fort [of the Arikara] a tablet of lead with the arms and inscription of the King [Louis XV], and a pyramid of stones for the General [Beauharnois].”

In 1913, schoolchildren from the city of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, discovered the lead plate where Vérendrye had placed it, near the junction of the Bad and Missouri rivers. The memorial had obviously been intended to commemorate his father’s earlier trip because inscribed in Latin is the legend: “In the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Louis XV, the most illustrious Lord, the Lord Marquis of Beauharnois, 1741, Pierre Gaultier De La Verendrye placed this.” In clarification of the actual date of placement, further information was hand-carved on the back of the lead tablet: “Placed by the Chevalier Verendrye, Louis La Londette, and A. Miotte. 30 March 1743.” The tablet is now preserved at the South Dakota State Historical Society as the first documentation of European presence in the area.

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