of his expeditions he traveled as far as the Mandan villages on the Missouri in his search for the western sea. This was in 1738. It was among the descendants of these Mandans living near Bismarck, Dakota, that Lewis and Clark passed a winter nearly seventy years later.

In 1742 the two sons of Verendrye made their way to the Mandan villages, and undertook an expedition westward, under the guidance of the Indians, hoping to find the Pacific. They traveled between the Black Hills and the Missouri, entered Montana, and finally, after much uncertain journeying and many strange experiences with the nomadic tribes of Indians, the mountains rose before them. The Spaniards had crossed the mountains to the south, but the Verendryes were the first white men to see the true Rocky Mountains on the north. It was in January, 1743, that they discovered the mountains, probably the Big Horn range in Wyoming. In the records of French Louisiana the names of the Verendryes merit a place with those of Father Marquette and La Salle.

CHAPTER III

THE FRENCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

The founding of New Orleans. Extent of French possessions. The beginnings of St. Louis. The gateway of Louisiana. Downfall of French power. Louisiana ceded to Spain. American and English explorations. Oregon not included in Louisiana.

While French explorers and traders were following the northern rivers, signs of genuine colonization began to appear in the south. At the beginning of the eighteenth century three countries maintained conflicting claims to the valley of the Mississippi. Spain held Florida and based her claim to the westward on De Soto's discovery of the great river. France held the upper waters, and La Salle and others had descended the river to its mouth and asserted possession. The charters of some of the English colonies on the

seaboard embodied sweeping claims to territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In spite of the doubts of King Louis XIV of France as to the value of the new country, he was finally persuaded to sanction the founding of a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. This was largely due to the enthusiasm of a gallant Canadian, Pierre

Le Moyne Differuille

AUTOGRAPH OF LE MOYNE D'IBERVILLE

Le Moyne d'Iberville, who sailed from France with an armed expedition in 1698. The first colony was established the year following at Biloxi, upon the Gulf of Mexico, within the present limits of Mississippi, but its checkered. career was ended in 1718, when Bienville d'Iberville, a brother of Le Moyne, founded the city of New Orleans.

The early years of the French colonists were not prosperous. In an effort to make the colony a source of income rather than

expense, the king in 1712 gave to Antoine Crozat an exclusive right to trade in that quarter. The failure of this plan resulted in its

Brienuilly

AUTOGRAPH OF BIENVILLE

abandonment in 1717, and the Company

of the West, better known as the Mississippi Company, was

formed, which succeeded to Crozat's rights.

Under the leadership of the notorious John Law, who for a time was a financial magnate in France, the company issued an unlimited amount of paper money without adequate security. This was done in part to further the interests of the company in the Mississippi

an

AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN LAW

valley; but after a period of wild excitement and speculation in France it was found that the paper money could not be exchanged for coin or solid property, and in 1721 there followed