Waterway Westward
The Lake of the Woods region has been busy with human activity for over 8,000 years, with the first European influence – explorers and fur traders – in the late 1600’s. Bear, deer, moose and waterfowl sustained communities and travellers along this waterway maze of forested islands, rock, sand, marsh, swamp, bays and access to an uncharted wilderness westward via the Winnipeg River.

Early European Exploration: French fur traders set up camps in the Lake of the Woods area beginning in the late 1600’s, initiating settlements and cultural change. The French learned of many survival techniques and water transport routes from the aboriginal people, knowledge necessary to existence, travel and trade in an often hostile and very remote environment.

While the British controlled trade activity through the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly over Rupert’s Land, extending south and west from Hudson Bay, the French made inroads west from Lake Superior, following the lead from early explorers Pierre Radisson and Sieur des Groseilliers in 1660. The British had been in the Hudson Bay area since the early 1600’s, and in 1690, Hudson’s Bay Company adventurer Henry Kelsey was exploring northern Manitoba. The French had been active along the St. Lawrence and the eastern Great Lakes area for a similar length of time, and by 1688, French explorer Jacques de Noyon led the way to Rainy Lake, near Lake of the Woods.

La Vérendreye: The main figure in opening up the Lake of the Woods water route to Manitoba, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, was born in Canada in 1685, the son of the sieur de Varennes, governor of Trois Riviêres. As a soldier, he fought in Europe during the War of Spanish Succession. Wounded in battle, he returned to Canada to farm and fur trade. In 1726, he joined his brother Jacques-René, the commandant of a Lake Superior French post, and the beneficiary of a vast land grant.

La Vérendrye sought French government backing for an expedition to use the Lake of the Woods region as a passageway to the Pacific Ocean. He was convinced that the route would succeed in 1728, a conviction that was strengthened when a native named Auchagah gave him a birch-bark map that outlined a water route through the Lake of the Woods: the area’s first published map.

In 1731, he set out with 3 of his sons and about 50 others. They established themselves at Fort Saint-Pierre in Rainy Lake, built Fort Saint-Charles in 1732 at Lake of the Woods, another on the Red River, and in 1734, while La Vérendrye returned to Montreal, his group constructed Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg. Having mapped and traversed these difficult lands in 3 years, La Vérendrye was disheartened to find that the official government line concerning his adventures had changed. Was he an explorer, or a shrewd businessman? He had found no route to the Pacific, but he had established control over the area’s fur trade. The French king wanted the Northwest Passage more than he desired more beaver pelts.

He returned west in 1735, determined to succeed in finding the legendary passage to the Pacific. Tragedy struck his Lake of the Woods camp in 1736, when his son, Jean-Baptiste, Jesuit Jean-Pierre Alneau and 19 others were murdered. Despite all setbacks, La Vérendrye continued to explore the west and set up trading posts until 1743; his sons furthered the mission, reaching the Rocky Mountains in that same year. La Vérendrye died at Montreal in 1749, while he was organizing a Saskatchewan River expedition, shortly after being awarded the Croix de Saint-Louis by the French king.