72 GEOEGE BETCE ON THE 



FoKT DE LA Reine. 



Veraudrye aud his sons pushed up the Assiuiboine, and we learn that on October 

 3rd, 1738, fifty or sixty miles from the mouth of the river they began to build Fort de la 

 Reine. This fort seems to have been on the north side of the river, and to have marked 

 the south end of the portage, or Indian carrying place, to Lake Manitoba. Exactly at 

 what point on the river this fort was situated we can hardly now determine, though on 

 the bank of the river south of the present Town of Portage la Prairie seems the most 

 likely spot. Several of the early maps give the site of Fort de la Reine at the northern 

 bend of the river, near the present village of Poplar Point. John McDonnell in the ac- 

 count of Red River {1192-91) speaks of a French commercial settlement a day's journey 

 from the mouth of the Assiniboine, probably about the site of the Hudson's Bay Company 

 establishment of recent days days known as " White Horse Plains." This he calls 

 Blondishe's Fort, and the trader says : — " Blondishe's Fort is the first we come to ; next to 

 it is Fort la Reine according to some, but others say that Fort la Reine stood at the Por- 

 tage la Prairie." The same writer speaks of another trading station of the French period, 

 " Adhemar's Fort," which was south of the present High Bluff Station of the C. P. R. 



McDonnell says ; — " by land the distance does not exceed six miles from Portage la 

 Prairie." 



Fort la Reine became the headquarters of the French operations in the North- West. 

 From this centre the expedition departed, by which the sons of Veraudrye discovered the 

 Rocky Mountains (1T43), and at Fort la Reine, Legardeur de St. Pierre wintered in 1Y52, 

 but on the French leaving it in that year the fort was burnt to the ground by the Assini- 

 boine Indians. 



PoPLAB Fort. 



Another reminder of the French period is found in the site of Poplar Fort (le Fort 

 des Trembles), nine miles south-west of Portage la Prairie. Its site is still marked by 

 the thick belt of poplar trees extending out on the plain. It is worthy of note that the 

 name St. Charles given to the Assiniboine by Veraudrye still lingers among the old 

 French half-breeds of the river, aud one of the best known French parishes on the Assini- 

 boine bears the name St. Charles. 



Sixty or seventy miles south-west of Portage la Prairie by land, the Souris or Mouse 

 River, called by Veraudrye, St. Pierre, empties into the Assiniboine. We have no exact 

 traces of fort or settlement during the French period at that point. But Margry says : — 

 " This point was the centre of the establishments and the point of departure of the ex- 

 peditions which the explorers intended to make to the south and to the north." Harmon 

 in 1805 says of it : — " It is now more than fifty years since a French missionary left this 

 place, and the prayers then taught the natives have not been forgotten." We know that 

 in 1738 the River Souris was used to reach the country of the Mandans, and in 1742 Ver- 

 andrye's sons crossed the plains from the Souris to the Missouri, ascended it aud saw at a 

 distance the Rocky Mountains. It would seem that frofia the junction of the Assiniboine 

 and Souris rivers, expeditions to the north were undertaken by which Lake Dauphin and 

 Lake Bourbon, where forts were built, were reached, aud even the great Saskatchewan 

 explored to the Forks and beyond. The French period of exploration was one of great 



