310 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
is said to have built Fort Poskoyac—Fort Poskoyac the second—on the 
lower Saskatchewan. In a paper read before the Society (R.S.C., 1906, 
pt. 1), Judge Prud’homme furnishes a very ingenious identification of 
the various French forts built, or said to have been built, on the Sas- 
katchewan. He enumerates six: Forts Bourbon and Poskoyac, built by 
the La Vérendrye; Fort La Jonquiére, built by de Niverville’s men; 
and Forts La Corne, Poskoyac and Pasquia (Poste Pasquia), by Saint- 
Lue de La Corne. Of these, he says that Fort Bourbon was situated 
upon Cedar lake, and La Jonquiére on the upper Saskatchewan. The 
two Forts Poskoyac were on the lower Saskatchewan; La Vérendrye’s 
Poskoyac, near the Forks of the Saskatchewan; La Corne’s fort of the 
same name at the entrance to Cumberland Lake; Fort La Corne some 
distance below the Forks; and Poste Pasquia on the Carrot river. 
The late Dr. Elliott Coues, in one of his foot-notes to the Henry- 
Thompson Journals (“ New Light on the Early History of the Greater 
Northwest,” II, 469), says that The Pas, close to the mouth of the 
Pasquia River, was the location of old Fort Poskoyac or Poscoiac. We 
have the evidence of both Hendry’s Journal and the Journal of Cocking 
to prove that a French fort existed at or near the mouth of the Pasquia 
River. The former establishes the presence of a second French fort, 
between the mouth of the Pasquia and the Forks of the Saskatchewan— 
in fact not very many miles below the Forks. Hendry gives no name 
to this upper fort, but mentions that it was “subordinate to Basquia.” 
Cocking, paddling up the Saskatchewan in 1772, left Basquia on 
August 1st, and ten days later reached a point on the river where the 
families of his Indian guides were awaiting them. “ Formerly,’ he 
notes in his Journal, the French had a House here... From Basquis 
to this place I make the course to be S. 58° W. and distance 150 miles.” 
Three days before, that is on the 8th of the month, he had passed “ an 
old Trading House belonging to the French pedlars before the conquest 
of Quebec.” This was about 92 miles from Basquia, and 58 miles from 
the upper fort. Cocking, therefore, gives us three French posts between 
The Pas and the Forks. Hendry for some reason does not mention 
the middle fort. Possibly he passed the spot after dark; or may have 
been hugging the other bank of the river and so missed it; or, again, 
it may have been built after his visit. 
Of these three forts, we know that the lower was situated at the 
mouth of the Pasquia. There is less certainty as to the position of the 
other two. Judge Prud’homme says of the upper one: “ Fort La Corne, 
appelé Nipawi par les sauvages, fondé par le chevalier Saint-Luc de la 
Corne, à quelques milles à l’est de la jonction des branches sud et nord 
de la Saskatchewan, en 1753.” He is somewhat indefinite as to the posi- 
