to be very fierce and hostile". Historian Arthur S. Morton's research concluded that it was "... beyond reason that Saint-Pierre should leave Fort La Reine, at Portage la Prairie, on 14th November, with the blizzards of winter ready to break upon the treeless plains, to travel on foot across unknown territory and among tribes till recently bitterly hostile to one another, a distance of some five hundred and fifty miles. Then, too, his narrative shows that in spite of his mention of the Rockies, the fort could not have been so far west." He dismissed the inference that Fort La Jonquière was located near Calgary and attributed the remains Inspector Brisebois found to an American fur-trading fort built in 1833. Instead, Morton believed the fort couldn't have been any further west than the elbow of the South Saskatchewan, and may have been located only 200 yards west of Fort de la Corne, near the Saskatchewan River Forks. In his work on the La Vérendryes, Fr. Antoine Champagne analyzed Saint-Pierre's writings and given the written accounts of Bougainville, Carleton, Henday, Cocking, Pond, Mackenzie and others that followed made no mention of Fort La Jonquière, like Morton he expressed that it was unlikely Fort La Jonquière was anywhere near the Rockies. Given how inaccurate the distances on scaled maps of the period were, Champagne calculated the fort would have been located only about 100 miles as the crow flies west of Fort Paskoya, about 160 to 180 miles along the river, which would place it near Nipawin. Notes References La Jonquière