the path of La Verendrye. The day
before that on which he had arranged to leave for the north, he was
taken violently ill and for three days could not move from his bed. As
ill luck would have it, his stock of medicines was in the bag which the
Assiniboines had carried off to their village, so that he could do
nothing for himself until he reached that place. About the middle of
December he was a little better, and made up his mind to attempt the
journey. When he and his men set out on their long march across the
plains, it was bitterly cold. They had no means of making a fire, and
were compelled to sleep at night on the open prairie in a half-frozen
condition. We can imagine what La Verendrye must have suffered before
at last he reached the Assiniboine village, more dead than alive.
After a few days' rest, he managed to make his way slowly to Fort La
Reine. 'Never in my life,' he says, 'did I endure so much misery,
pain, and fatigue as on that journey.'

{70}

While at the Assiniboine village La Verendrye reproached the Indians
with having lied to him about the Mandans, so as to lead him to believe
that they were white men. They replied that he had misunderstood them;
that they had not referred to the Mandans, but to another nation who
lived farther down the river. One of the Assiniboines sprang up before
him and exclaimed: 'I am the man best able to talk to you about this
matter. Last summer I killed one of this nation of white men. He was
covered with iron armour. If I had not killed his horse first, I
should myself have been destroyed.' La Verendrye asked him what he had
brought back to prove his story. 'I had no chance to bring anything,'
he said. 'When I was about to cut off his head, I saw some men on
horseback, who were trying to prevent my retreat, and I had much
difficulty in making my escape. I had to throw away everything I had,
even to my blanket, and ran away naked.'

La Verendrye thought that this man was probably telling the truth.
What he said agreed fairly well with what he had himself heard from the
Mandans, and was applicable probably to the Spaniards. But he was
still as far away as ever from any direct information {71} about the
road he should follow to reach the Western Sea, and this was first and
always the thought that occupied his mind. He hoped that the men whom
he had left behind to winter with the Mandans would be able to obtain
from them the facts for which he was so an