[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.  The coureurs carried presents of pemmican.  To prevent surprise, the Assiniboines marched under the sheltered slopes of the hills and observed military order.  In front rode the warriors, dressed in garnished buckskin and armed with spears and arrows.  Behind, on foot, came the old and the lame.  To the rear was another guard of warriors.  Lagging in ragged lines far back came a ragamuffin brigade, the women, children, and dogs—­squaws astride cayuses lean as barrel hoops, children in moss bags on their mothers’ backs, and horses and dogs alike harnessed with the travaille—­two sticks tied into a triangle, with the shafts fastened to a cinch on horse or dog.  The joined end of the shafts dragged on the ground, and between them hung the baggage, surmounted by papoose, or pet owl, or the half-tamed pup of a prairie-wolf, or even a wild-eyed young squaw with hair flying to the wind.  At night camp was made in a circle formed of the hobbled horses.  Outside, the dogs scoured in pursuit of coyotes.  The women and children took refuge in the centre, and the warriors slept near their picketed horses.  By the middle of November the motley cavalcade had crossed the height of land between the Assiniboine River and the Missouri, and was heading for the Mandan villages.  Mandan coureurs came out to welcome the visitors, pompously presenting De la Verendrye with corn in the ear and tobacco.  At this stage, the explorer discovered that his bag of presents for his hosts had been stolen by the Assiniboines; but he presented the Mandans with what ammunition he could spare, and gave them plenty of pemmican which his hunters had cured.  The two tribes drove a brisk trade in furs, which the northern Indians offered, and painted plumes, which the Mandans displayed to the envy of Assiniboine warriors.