[Illustration: Hungry Hall, 1870; near the site of the Verendrye Fort
in Rainy River Region.]
On the morning of October 18 drums beat to arms. Additional men had
come up from the other forts. Fifty-two soldiers and _voyageurs_ now
stood in line. Arms were inspected. To each man were given powder,
balls, axe, and kettle. Pierre and Francois de la Verendrye hoisted
the French flag. For the first time a bugle call sounded over the
prairie. At the word, out stepped the little band of white men,
marking time for the Western Sea. The course lay west-southwest, up
the Souris River, through wooded ravines now stripped of foliage, past
alkali sloughs ice-edged by frost, over rolling cliffs russet and bare,
where gopher and badger and owl and roving buffalo were the only signs
of life. On the 21st of October two hundred Assiniboine warriors
joined the marching white men. In the sheltered ravines buffalo grazed
by the hundreds of thousands, and the march was delayed by frequent
buffalo hunts to gather pemmican--pounded marrow and fat of the
buffalo--which was much esteemed by the Mandans. Within a month so
many Assiniboines had joined the French that the company numbered more
than six hundred warriors, who were ample protection against the Sioux;
and the Sioux were the deadly terror of all tribes of the plains. But
M. de la Verendrye was expected to present ammunition to his
Assiniboine friends.
Four outrunners went speeding to the Missouri to notify the Mandans of
the advancing warriors.
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