1716, a glowing account, told to him by the natives, of walled
cities, of ships and cannon, and of white-bearded men who lived
farther west. In 1720 the Jesuit Charlevoix, already familiar
with Canada, came out from France, went to the Mississippi
country, and reported that an attempt to find the path to the
Western Sea might be made either by way of the Missouri or
farther north through the country of the Sioux west of Lake
Superior. Both routes involved going among warlike native tribes
engaged in incessant and bloody struggles with each other and not
unlikely to turn on the white intruder. Memorial after memorial
to the French court for assistance resulted at last in serious
effort, but effort handicapped because the court thought that a
monopoly of the fur trade was the only inducement required to
promote the work of discovery.

La Verendrye was more eager to reach the Western Sea than he was
to trade. To outward seeming, however, he became just a fur
trader and a successful one. We find him, in 1726, at the
trading-post of Nipigon, not far from the lake of that name, near
the north shore of Lake Superior. From this point it was not very
difficult to reach the shore of one great sea, Hudson Bay, but
that was not the Western Sea which fired his imagination.
Incessantly he questioned the savages with whom he traded about
what lay in the unknown West. His zeal was kindled anew by the
talk of an Indian named Ochagach. This man said that he himself
had been on a great lake lying west of Lake Superior, that out of
it flowed a river westward, that he had paddled down this river
until he came to water which, as La Verendrye understood, rose
and fell like the tide. Farther, to the actual mouth of the
river, the savage had not gone, for fear of enemies, but he had