le and willing to provide him
with competent guides.

For some reason La Verendrye was unable himself to return to the
country of the Mandans or to go still farther west. But in the spring
of 1740 he sent his eldest son Pierre into that country in order to
make further inquiries, and to obtain guides if possible for the
projected journey to the Western Sea. Pierre spent the following
winter with the Mandans, but he could not find the men he needed as
guides, and so he returned to Fort La Reine in the summer of 1741.

In the spring of 1742, not discouraged by the failure of the previous
year, Pierre set out again for the Mandans, accompanied this time by
his brother Francois, who was known as the Chevalier, and by two men
from the fort. The journey was to prove momentous, but at first the
outlook was dark. When they arrived in the Mandan country they could
find no sign of the Horse Indians, as the mounted Indians from the West
were called. Pierre and his brother waited long at the Mandan village
with what patience they could summon. The month of May went by, then
June, then {75} most of July, with still no sign of the missing band.
Finally the brothers decided that, if they were to go farther west,
they could wait no longer, for the season was advancing and it would
soon be too late to do anything. At last they found among the Mandans
two young men who agreed to lead them to the country of the Horse
People. This would bring them to their hoped-for guides. Without a
moment's delay they set out towards the south-west in search of the
missing Indians.

They travelled for twenty days in a south-westerly direction, through
what were afterwards known as the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, a
country unlike anything they had ever seen before. On every side they
could see mounds and pillars of brilliantly-coloured earth, blue and
crimson and green and yellow. So much were they struck with the
singular spectacle that they would have liked to carry some of the
coloured earth with them to show to their father on their return. But
a long journey lay before them. They had to carry everything they
needed on their backs, and it would have been folly to add to the load
something that was useless for their immediate needs, something that
they could neither eat nor wear.

{76}

About the beginning of August the party reached a mountain where the
Mandans expected to find the Horse Indians so eagerly sought. But the
Ho