Night
after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
sleeping places. La Verendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
effects.
As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VERENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.
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