Terribly embarrassed by lack of money, he returned to Quebec and represented his deplorable situation. The Governor reported it to the King, but could get no more from him than the renewal of the fur-trade monopoly. Undaunted, Verendrye persisted, though obliged to suspend exploration and devote himself for a while to trading, in order to secure money. There was enough to dishearten a man of less than heroic stuff. In 1736, his eldest son, with a Jesuit priest and twenty others, was surprised and massacred by the Sioux on an island in the Lake of the Woods. Also he was harassed by creditors and compelled repeatedly to make the long and tedious journey to Montreal. In spite of all these mishaps, he pushed his posts gradually westward and by 1738 {317} he had established six, viz., St. Pierre, on Rainy Lake; St. Charles, on the Lake of the Woods; Maurepas at the mouth of the Winnipeg River; Bourbon on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg; La Reine on Assiniboine River; and Dauphin on Lake Manitoba. In 1738 he made a bold push for the Pacific, with fifty persons, French and Indians. After many devious wanderings, seeking a band that could conduct him to the Western Ocean, he reached the Mandans, on the upper Missouri, the singularly interesting people among whom Lewis and Clark spent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of the presents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to lead him further and was obliged to return. The journey was made in midwinter and was full of frightful hardships. His eldest surviving son, Pierre de la Verendrye, full of his father's spirit, devoted himself to the same quest. He had with him his brother and two other men. They started from Fort La Reine, reached the Mandans, and pushed on to the West. All through the summer, autumn, and early winter they toiled on, going hither and yon, beguiled by the usual fairy-tales of tribesmen. {318} At last, on New Year's day, 1743, two hundred and fifty years after the Discovery, doubtless first of all white men, they saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. This probably was the Big Horn Range, one hundred and twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park. Finding this tremendous obstacle across their path to the Pacific, they turned back. On July 12 they reached La Prairie, to the great joy of their father, who had given them up for lost. A later Governor of Canada not only ignored the heroic services of the Verendryes, but seized their goods, turned over their posts to another, and reduced them to poverty.