Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye
Boumois; signed Laverandrye
Born	1685-11-17 Trois-Rivières, New France
Died	1749-12-05 Montreal, New France
Occupation	Officer, fur-trader, explorer, commandant of western posts
Father	René Gaultier de Varennes
Mother	Marie Boucher
Partner	Marie-Anne Dandonneau Du Sablé
Children	Jean-Baptiste Gaultier de La Vérendrye
Siblings	Jacques-René Gaultier de Varennes

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye ((1685-11-17)17 November 1685 – 5 December 1749(1749-12-05) (aged 64)), also known as Boumois and who signed his name Laverandrye, was a French colonial officer, fur-trader, and explorer who commanded New France's western posts and led a series of expeditions into the interior of North America in search of a route to the western sea.

Early life

La Vérendrye was born on 17 November 1685 at Trois-Rivières, the son of René Gaultier de Varennes, a former officer of the Régiment de Carignan-Salières who had become governor of Trois-Rivières, and Marie Boucher, daughter of governor Pierre Boucher of Trois-Rivières. His father died in 1689 leaving the family in reduced circumstances. Pierre attended the Quebec seminary from 1696 to 1699 and received a cadet's commission in the colonial regular troops in 1696.

He took part in several military campaigns during the War of the Spanish Succession: in 1704 he joined Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville's raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, and in 1705 he campaigned in Newfoundland under Daniel d'Auger de Subercase. Seeking further advancement, he went to France in early 1708 and joined the Régiment de Bretagne, where his brother Louis Gaultier de Varennes was already serving. On 11 September 1709 he was seriously wounded — struck by gunshot and eight sabre cuts — at the Battle of Malplaquet, and was taken prisoner. Released in 1710 and promoted lieutenant, he found he could not support himself on his officer's salary and obtained permission to return to Canada, sailing in July 1712.

Marriage and family life

Through the intervention of Mme de Joybert (wife of Governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil) at court, La Vérendrye recovered his ensign's commission on returning to Canada. On 29 October 1712 he married Marie-Anne Dandonneau Du Sablé at Notre-Dame de Québec parish. Her dowry included 2,000 livres and land on Île Dupas and Île aux Vaches in Lac Saint-Pierre. The couple settled on Île aux Vaches near Trois-Rivières, where La Vérendrye spent some fifteen years clearing a farm of roughly 38 acres. They had six children — four sons and two daughters. Despite income from the family fief of Tremblay, his ensign's pay, and a fur-trading post on the Rivière Saint-Maurice established by his father, the family remained far from prosperous, and he was repeatedly obliged to borrow money and sell property.

Kaministiquia and the Poste du Nord

By the mid-1720s La Vérendrye's military and agricultural career had brought him little success. In 1726 his brother Jacques-René Gaultier de Varennes received command of the Poste du Nord, an enormous region north of Lake Superior, with its main establishment at Kaministiquia (present-day Thunder Bay, Ontario) and secondary posts at Nipigon and Michipicoton. Pierre joined as second in command, and in 1728, when Jacques-René left to participate in the Fox Wars, Pierre became commander-in-chief of the entire post system.

While stationed at Kaministiquia and the surrounding posts, La Vérendrye questioned Indigenous traders methodically about the lands to the west. A Cree chief named Pako described Lake Winnipeg and its river network; another Cree figure, known as Vieux Crapaud, provided accounts of Mandan territory; and a Cree guide named Auchagah drew a map on bark of the western country. Working from these sources, La Vérendrye compiled his own map of the continental interior — an improvement on existing cartography — though Lake Winnipeg appeared as little more than a widening of a river rather than the complex waterway hub it proved to be.

In 1728 at Michilimackinac, La Vérendrye met the Jesuit Nicolas Degonnor, who agreed to carry his reports and maps to the governor. In 1730 he travelled to Quebec City to present his plan to Governor Charles de Beauharnois. That October, Beauharnois and Intendant Gilles Hocquart jointly informed Minister Maurepas of the plan to send La Vérendrye west in spring 1731 to build a post on Lake Winnipeg. The Crown provided only 2,000 livres for gifts to Indigenous peoples; the explorer was obliged to raise private financing for the rest.

Western expeditions

Between March and June 1731, La Vérendrye formed a nine-man partnership with his eldest son Jean-Baptiste Gaultier de la Vérendrye, his nephew Christophe Dufrost de La Jemerais (son of his sister Marie-Renée Gaultier de Varennes), and several Montreal merchants including Louis Hamelin, Laurent-Eustache Gamelin (called Châteauvieux), and Ignace Gamelin Jr.. Beauharnois appointed La Vérendrye commandant of the Lake Winnipeg post with a three-year fur-trade monopoly.

On 8 June 1731, La Vérendrye departed Montreal with his sons Jean-Baptiste, Pierre, and François, along with approximately fifty engagés, and joined the Jesuit missionary Charles-Michel Mésaiger at Michilimackinac. The party reached Grand Portage on the western end of Lake Superior on 26 August 1731. When the engagés refused to advance further into the interior, La Vérendrye and Mésaiger persuaded a smaller group to push on with Jean-Baptiste and La Jemerais. The advance party reached Rainy Lake in autumn 1731 and built Fort Saint-Pierre, the first of eight posts La Vérendrye would eventually establish. La Vérendrye himself wintered at Kaministiquia with the main force. In spring 1732 the groups reunited, moved to the Lake of the Woods accompanied by fifty canoes of Cree and Assiniboin, and built Fort Saint-Charles, which served as headquarters for several years.

Progress westward was repeatedly hampered by inadequate financing. In 1733 La Vérendrye sent La Jemerais to Quebec to report on the enterprise's financial state: some 43,000 livres had been spent with inadequate returns, and a request for 10,000 livres per year in Crown support went unanswered. On 27 May 1734 he departed himself for Montreal to address the partnership's disenchantment. By June 1734 his son Jean-Baptiste had completed construction of Fort Maurepas on the Red River near its mouth on Lake Winnipeg, the post named for the minister.

The worst personal setbacks came in 1736. His nephew La Jemerais, ill while commanding Fort Maurepas, died on 10 May 1736 during an attempt to return to Fort Saint-Charles. Then on 8 June 1736, a Sioux war party attacked a party of nineteen men La Vérendrye had sent to Kaministiquia and Michilimackinac for supplies: Jean-Baptiste, the Jesuit Jean-Pierre Aulneau (who had replaced Mésaiger), and seventeen others were killed on a Lake of the Woods island. La Vérendrye chose not to retaliate, fearing the wider consequences of open warfare.

Despite these losses, La Vérendrye pressed on toward the Mandan villages he had long been told lay within reach. In 1738, having built Fort La Reine at the site of present-day Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba, he set out on 16 October accompanied by twenty picked men, his sons Louis-Joseph and François, the Nolan brothers (associates of merchant Charles Nolan Lamarque), and 25 Assiniboin guides. His escort swelled to 600 Assiniboin and 30 Mandan as he approached. On 3 December 1738 he entered the principal Mandan village, located in present-day North Dakota near the upper Little Knife River or Shell Creek, roughly 20 miles from what is now Sanish. He dispatched Louis-Joseph to view the nearby river — later identified as the Missouri — but did not go himself to observe it. Louis-Joseph found the Missouri turning sharply southwest at Old Crossings; high bluffs blocked the downstream view that would have revealed the river's normal southeast flow toward the Gulf of Mexico rather than a western sea.

Later years

The Mandan journey left La Vérendrye physically exhausted and deeper in debt. He returned to Fort La Reine in January 1739. In June 1740 he made a third voyage east, and on reaching Montreal learned that his wife Marie-Anne had died the previous September, buried in the Sainte-Anne chapel at Notre-Dame church. The Quebec reception was more cordial: Beauharnois lodged him and, when the 1735 merchant arrangements expired in June 1741, secured him a fur-trade monopoly over the posts he had founded. La Vérendrye departed west again in June 1741 accompanied by Father Claude-Godefroy Coquart.

Over 1741–1743 his son Pierre built Fort Dauphin on Lake Winnipegosis, while others established Fort Bourbon on the northwest shore of Lake Winnipeg and Fort Paskoya near Cedar Lake — posts serving the Cree, who had long sought alternatives to the lengthy journey to the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1742–43 Louis-Joseph led a journey southwest that reached the Big Horn Mountains of present-day Wyoming, the westernmost point of the family's explorations. By 1742 Maurepas had concluded that someone better suited should be associated with the command, and the pressure on La Vérendrye to step aside became clear. Citing ill health, he resigned in 1743, taking effect the following year.

His successor, Nicolas-Joseph de Noyelles de Fleurimont, married a niece of La Vérendrye, and his sons continued to trade in the west. In 1744 Beauharnois secured him a captain's commission; he was also named captain of guards. La Vérendrye settled in Montreal society, entertaining and courting the widow Esther Sayward (also known as Sayer), the widow of the great merchant Pierre de Lestage. In 1746, when Noyelles resigned, he was reappointed commandant and began planning a new expedition via the Saskatchewan River — belatedly recognizing it as the most practical route toward a western sea. He never made the journey. He died on 5 December 1749 in Montreal and was buried in the Sainte-Anne chapel at Notre-Dame church, having just received — the greatest honour of his career — the cross of Saint-Louis from Antoine-Louis Rouillé, Maurepas's successor. His estate was valued at roughly 4,000 livres, consisting largely of clothing and personal adornments.

Legacy

La Vérendrye extended New France's trading frontier to the Manitoba lakes and built a network of eight posts stretching from Rainy Lake to the Saskatchewan country, diverting trade from the Hudson's Bay Company and Hudson Bay toward the St. Lawrence. In doing so he cultivated French alliances among the Cree, Assiniboin, Monsoni, and other nations across a vast interior territory. His failure to locate a western sea was in part a consequence of the Crown's refusal to fund the venture adequately, which forced him to rely on merchant partnerships whose commercial priorities frequently overrode the exploration agenda. Several institutions in the Thunder Bay area bear his name, including École secondaire catholique de la Vérendrye and La Verendrye Provincial Park.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography