La Verendrye was more eager to reach the Western Sea than he was
to trade. To outward seeming, however, he became just a fur
trader and a successful one. We find him, in 1726, at the
trading-post of Nipigon, not far from the lake of that name, near
the north shore of Lake Superior. From this point it was not very
difficult to reach the shore of one great sea, Hudson Bay, but
that was not the Western Sea which fired his imagination.
Incessantly he questioned the savages with whom he traded about
what lay in the unknown West. 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. Farther, to the actual mouth of the
river, the savage had not gone, for fear of enemies, but he had
been told that it emptied into a great body of salt water upon
the shores of which lived many people. We may be sure that La
Verendrye read into the words of the savage the meaning which he
himself desired and that in reality the Indian was describing
only the waters which flow into Lake Winnipeg.
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