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Updated: June 27, 2025
The North-West Company followed the route of the old French traders from Lachine by way of the Ottawa or the lakes to the head of Lake Superior, and its principal depot was Fort William on the Kaministiquia River. The servants of the North-West Company became indefatigable explorers of the territories as far as the Pacific Ocean and arctic seas.
The crews were sulky. Kaministiquia was the outermost post in the West. Within a month, the early Northern winter would set in. One hunter can scramble for his winter's food where fifty will certainly starve; and the Indians could not be expected back from the chase with supplies of furs and food till spring. The canoemen had received no pay.
In 1688 De Noyon of Three Rivers had gone as far west as the Lake of the Woods towards what is now Minnesota and Manitoba; and in 1717 De Lanoue had built a fur post at Kaministiquia, near what is now Fort William on Lake Superior. The shore was always perilous to the boatman of frail craft.
Here assaults, arrests and imprisonments took place. It is needless for us to give the details of this unfortunate affair, except to say that the seizure of the Fort brought much trouble afterwards to the founder. Moving some miles up the Kaministiquia River Lord Selkirk made his military encampment, which bore the name of "Pointe De Meuron."
For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
Rumors, however, at length reached Mary that he had fled away to the distant Kaministiquia River, where for a time he lived, solitary and alone, in a little bark wigwam. One day, when out shooting in his canoe, he was caught in some treacherous rapids and carried over the wild and picturesque Ka-ka-be-ka Falls, about which so many thrilling Indian legends cluster.
The difficulties were so great that the scouts were led to find another route for the boats up the Kaministiquia River. In this they were successful; in all this worry from mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies in millions, the troops preserved their good temper, and Col. Wolseley said, "I have never been with any body of men in the field so well fed as this has been."
The said lake is 500 leagues long in a straight line, from point to point, without going around coves nor the bays of Michipicoten and Kaministiquia. To go from lake Superior to lake Asemipigon there is only 15 leagues to travel, in which happen seven portages averaging 3 good leagues; the said lake has a circumference of 280 leagues.
The harbors were fathoms deep, and the waves thrashed by a cross wind often proved as dangerous as the high sea. It took M. de la Vérendrye's canoemen a month to coast from the Straits of Mackinaw to Kaministiquia, which they reached on the 26th of August, seventy-eight days after they had left Montreal. The same distance is now traversed in two days. Prospects were not encouraging.
Equipping four canoes, Lieutenant de la Jemmeraie and young Jean Ba'tiste de la Vérendrye set out with thirty men from Kaministiquia, portaged through dense forests over moss and dank rock past the high cataract of the falls, and launched westward to prepare a fort for the reception of their leader in spring. Before winter had closed navigation, Fort St.
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