Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye as a sculpture in front of the Parliament in Québec .

A map that the Indian Auchagah painted for Pierre Gaultier. The map shows canoe routes west of Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg .

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (born November 17, 1685 in Trois-Rivières , † December 5, 1749 in Montréal ) was a French-Canadian officer , fur trader and explorer .

In the 1730s, he and his four sons traveled the area west of Lake Superior , initially on the official order of the Governor Général , in order for the colonial power to travel to the prairie and on to the Mississippi River , i.e. to the south, or to the west to the Pacific Find. He was the first European to reach North Dakota and the upper Missouri River . Based on his tours of discovery, two of his sons, including Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye , crossed the prairie as far as Wyoming in the 1740s and became the first Europeans known to see the Rocky Mountains .

literature

• Alan Taylor: American colonies. The Settlement of North America to 1800. (= The Penguin History of the United States ). Viking, 2001, chap. The Great Plains 1680-1800. Pp. 417-419. (Unchanged reprint: 2002, ISBN 0-14-200210-0 )
• G. Hubert Smith, W. Raymond Wood: The explorations of the La Vérendryes in the northern plains. University of Nebraska Press , Lincoln 1980, ISBN 0-8032-4712-5 .
• W. Raymond Wood, Thomas Thiessen (Ed.): Early fur trade on the northern plains. Canadian traders among the Mangan and Hidatsa Indians 1738-1818. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1985, ISBN 0-8061-1899-7 .

Web links

Commons : Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ways to the West , Animated Map, forts on the Way, 1732–1739. Its paths are progressively shown after clicking the button right. below the Reinitialiser card . Optionally English / French, Musée virtuel d'histoire. Text: detailed biography