Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/31

Rh The first white man that we know certainly to have visited South Dakota was a young man named Verendrye, in the year 1743. Verendrye was employed, as had been his father before him, by the Canadian government, to explore the American continent westward to the Pacific Ocean. In 1738 the father and son had come as far west as the Missouri, at the Mandan villages in what is now North Dakota, but becoming discouraged had returned to Canada. The father died, and in 1742 the son set out on a new enterprise, reaching the Missouri and following it westward until stopped by the barrier of the Rocky Mountains, at or very near the site of Helena, Montana. There he turned back and, traveling in a southeasterly direction, reached the Missouri River somewhere in central South Dakota, where he spent some weeks with a band of Indians which he calls the band of the Little Cherry. He came to these Indians on the 15th of March, 1743, and remained with them until the 2d of April. Before leaving them he claimed the land for the king of France and upon a hill near the camp planted a lead plate engraved with the arms of France, and marked the spot with a heap of stones. He then set out for the Mandan villages, which he reached on the 18th. To unearth that plate would be a rich find for some enterprising young South Dakotan. Taking into account the directions traveled and the time spent in making the trip, it is most likely that this plate rests within fifty miles of the state capital.

In 1745 De Lusigan, a courier in the employ of the Canadian government, visited Big Stone Lake and other points in western Minnesota to call in the Canadian