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Updated: May 11, 2025
Once in the Kaministikwia, the map has no territorial divisions other than those between the different tribal hunting grounds, each one of which was watered by a hundred streams and marked by the 'carrying places' where the canoes had to be 'portaged. There lived the 'Nation of the Bear' and the 'Nation of the Snake, whose special totems of course were worked in coloured quills on every war canoe; and there flowed many a river 'the course of which is uncertain. Along the great Assiniboine lay the 'Warrior's track from the River of the West, and just where the prairies ran out into the complete unknown there was the vista of a second Eldorado in the hopeful suggestion that 'Hereabouts are supposed to be the Mountains of Bright Stones mentioned in the Map of ye Indian Ochagach.
To do this, he must obtain the permission and support of the governor-general of Canada, the Marquis de Beauharnois. He therefore set out for Quebec, taking with him a rough map which Ochagach had drawn for him. This map professed to make clear the position of the countries which Ochagach declared that he had visited.
According to his own story, Ochagach had travelled far towards the setting sun, until he came to a great lake, out of which a river flowed westward. He said that he had paddled down this river until he reached a point where the water ebbed and flowed.
In 1731 La Verendrye set out for the West with three sons, a nephew, a Jesuit priest, the Indian Ochagach as guide a party numbering in all about fifty. He intended to build trading-posts as he went westward and to make the last post always a base from which to advance still farther. His difficulties read like those of Columbus.
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.
Ochagach, an old Indian, drew maps on birch bark showing rivers that emptied into the Western Sea. De la Vérendrye's smouldering ambitions kindled. He hurried to Michilimackinac. There the traders and Indians told the same story. Glory seemed suddenly within De la Vérendrye's grasp. Carried away with the passion for discovery that ruled his age, he took passage in the canoes bound for Quebec.
For three or four years he remained in command of the Nipigon post, faithfully discharging his duties as a fur-trader, but with his mind always alert for any information that might help him later to discover a way to the Western Sea. One day there came to him from the Kaministikwia river on which the city of Fort William now stands an Indian named Ochagach.
With La Vérendrye were to go three of his sons, Jean-Baptiste, Pierre, and François, and his nephew La Jemeraye. A Jesuit missionary, Father Messager, would join the party at Fort Michilimackinac, and the Indian Ochagach was to act as guide.
Jeffreys, added to his standard atlas of America, in 1760, this item of information on the Far Northwest: Hereabouts are supposed to be the Mountains of Bright Stones mentioned in the Map of ye Indian Ochagach. Speculation of the wildcat kind was bad. But it was the seamy side of a praiseworthy spirit of enterprise. Monopoly seems worse than speculation. And so, in many ways, it was.
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