At length, in the summer of 1738, La Vérendrye felt that he could carry out his plan of visiting the Mandans. He left one of his sons, Pierre, in charge of Fort St Charles, and with the other two, François and Louis, set forth on his journey to the West. Travelling down the Winnipeg river in canoes, they stopped for a few hours at Fort Maurepas, then crossed Lake Winnipeg and paddled up the muddy waters of Red River to the mouth of the Assiniboine, the site of the present city of Winnipeg, then seen by white men for the first time. La Vérendrye found it occupied by a band of Crees under two war chiefs. He landed, {48} pitched his tent on the banks of the Assiniboine, and sent for the two chiefs and reproached them with what he had heard--that they had abandoned the French posts and had taken their furs to the English on Hudson Bay. They replied that the accusation was false; that they had gone to the English during only one season, the season in which the French had abandoned Fort Maurepas after the death of La Jemeraye, and had thus left the Crees with no other means of getting the goods they required. 'As long as the French remain on our lands,' they said, 'we promise you not to go elsewhere with our furs.' One of the chiefs then asked him where he was now going. La Vérendrye replied that it was his purpose to ascend the Assiniboine river in order to see the country. 'You will find yourself among the Assiniboines,' said the chief; 'and they are a useless people, without intelligence, who do not hunt the beaver, and clothe themselves only in the skins of buffalo. They are a good-for-nothing lot of rascals and might do you harm.' But La Vérendrye had heard such tales before and was not to be frightened from his purpose. He took leave of the Crees, turned his canoes up the shallow waters of the Assiniboine river, and ascended {49} it to where now stands the city of Portage la Prairie. Here he built a fort, which he named Fort La Reine, in honour of the queen of France. [Illustration: An Indian encampment. From a painting by Paul Kane.] While this was being done, a party of Assiniboines arrived. La Vérendrye soon found, as he had expected, that the Crees through jealousy had given the Assiniboines a character which they did not deserve. With all friendliness they welcomed the strangers and were overjoyed at the presents which the French gave them. The most valued presents consisted of knives, chisels, awls, and other small tools. Up to this time these people had been dependent upon implements made of stone and of bone roughly fashioned to serve their purposes, and these implements were very crude and inferior compared with the sharp steel tools of the white men.