1685-1749

French Explorer and Soldier

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye was a very prolific, but largely unheralded, French explorer in the New World in the first half of the eighteenth century. He traveled widely through central Canada, visiting many of the places later seen by the Lewis and Clark expedition that was to take place 50 years later.

La Vérendrye was born in New France (now Canada) in 1685. Almost nothing is known of his early childhood except that it did not last long; at age 12 he joined the French army, fighting in raids against the British in the New World as well as fighting for France in the War of the Spanish Succession. Although taken prisoner in 1709, he was freed and returned to New France, where...