1742 - Verendrye explores the West to the Rocky Mountains

The Verendrye wildlife refuge in Quebec, Canada

        The intrepid Verendrye ventured into the country of the Snake people,  or Shoshone, and reached the Black Hills before turning back.   In Feb. 1913, a fourteen year old school girl named Hattie May Foster found a corner of a lead plate they had left to mark the westernmost point of their travels.  Verendrye and his sons ventured deeper into the uncharted country of the American West than any French, English, or Dutch explorers.  The land they now claimed for the King of France became part of the French Louisiana territory that was ceded to the new American republic by Napoleon in 1803.  In time, the lands first explored by Verendrye would become the modern-day states of Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota.

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