La Vérendrye

Champagne, Antoine.

Nouvelles Études sur les La Vérendrye et le poste de l'Ouest. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1971.

The La Vérendryes, father and three sons and a nephew (La Jemeraye), came from a prominent Québec family. The father, born in Québec 1685 (he died in Montreal in 1749), is important in Canadian discovery as he was one of the first North American born explorers to search out the details of his native continent. His significance in Québec history is told in this fine book, which explains how trade and the cross went hand in hand. The La Vérendryes extended trade and discoveries to Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba and Winnipegosis; searched for the much advertised Mer de l'Ouest, or Western Sea; and from 1731 to 1743 traded through much of this northwest based around the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. They travelled to the Mandans on the Missouri River in 1738-39. They built eight posts in the interior, including Fort la Reine. Two of the sons, in 1743, made a great western journey that took them as far as the Bighorn range of the Rockies, east of Yellowstone Park, and to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Included in this work is a section on Jesuit missionaries in the west, 1731-51. This book contains a useful family chronology, signatures of all family members and their associates, various family documents, excellent line drawings of some of the trading establishments, and is an interesting tour of the historical horizons of the West at that time and of the family's remarkable contribution to its history. It displays altogether a fine contribution to Québec's exploration of what was then its Great West.

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