They cultivated abundant crops and stored them in
cave cellars. Every day they brought their visitors more than
twenty dishes cooked in earthen pottery of their own handicraft.
There was incredible feasting, which La Verendrye avoided but
which his sons enjoyed. The Mandan language he could not
understand and close questioning as to the route to the Western
Sea was thus impossible. He learned enough to discredit the vague
tales of white men in armor and peopled towns with which his
lying guides had regaled him. In the end he decided for the time
being to return to Fort La Reine and to leave two of his
followers to learn the Mandan language so that in the future they
might act as interpreters. When he left the Mandan village on the
13th of December, he was already ill and it is a wonder that he
did not perish from the cold on the winter journey across hill
and prairie. "In all my life I have never," he says, "endured
such misery from illness and fatigue, as on that journey." On the
11th of February he was back at Fort La Reine, worn out and
broken in health but still undaunted and resolved never to
abandon his search.
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