France and England in N America, Part VII, Vol 1: A Half-Century of Conflict

342

Mémoire sur les Renards, 27 Avril, 1727.

343

Ibid.

344

Mémoire du Roy, 29 Avril, 1727.

345

Beauharnois et Dupuy au Ministre, 25 Octobre, 1727.

346

Mémoire de Dupuy, 1728.

347

Desliettes came to meet them, by way of Chicago, with five hundred Illinois warriors and twenty Frenchmen. La Perrière et La Fresnière à Beauharnois, 10 Septembre, 1728.

348

Guignas à Beauharnois, 29 Mai, 1728.

349

Dépêche de Beauharnois, 1 Septembre, 1728.

350

The best account of this expedition is that of Père Emanuel Crespel. Lignery made a report which seems to be lost, as it does not appear in the Archives.

351

Beauharnois au Ministre, 15 Mai, 1729; Ibid., 21 Juillet, 1729.

352

Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 2 Novembre, 1730. An Indian tradition says that about this time there was a great battle between the Outagamies and the French, aided by their Indian allies, at the place called Little Butte des Morts, on the Fox River. According to the story, the Outagamies were nearly destroyed. Perhaps this is a perverted version of the Villiers affair. (See Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 207.) Beauharnois also reports, under date of 6 May, 1730, that a party of Outagamies, returning from a buffalo hunt, were surprised by two hundred Ottawas, Ojibwas, Menominies, and Winnebagoes, who killed eighty warriors and three hundred women and children.

353

Some particulars of this affair are given by Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada, ii. 437; but he does not give his authority. I have found no report of it by those engaged.

354

Relation de la Défaite des Renards par les Sauvages Hurons et Iroquois, le 28 Février, 1732. (Archives de la Marine.)

355

The story is told in Snelling, Tales of the Northwest (1830), under the title of La Butte des Morts, and afterwards, with variations, by the aged Augustus Grignon, in his Recollections, printed in the Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society, iii.; also by Judge M. L. Martin and others. Grignon, like all the rest, was not born till after the time of the alleged event. The nearest approach to substantial evidence touching it is in a letter of Beauharnois, who writes in 1730 that the Sieur Dubuisson was to attack the Outagamies with fifty Frenchmen and five hundred and fifty Indians, and that Marin, commander at Green Bay, was to join him. Beauharnois au Ministre, 25 Juin, 1730.

356

Mémoire sur le Canada, 1736.

357

Charles Bodmer was the artist who accompanied Prince Maximilian of Wied in his travels in the interior of North America.

The name Outagamie is Algonquin for a fox. Hence the French called the tribe Renards, and the Americans, Foxes. They called themselves Musquawkies, which is said to mean "red earth," and to be derived from the color of the soil near one of their villages.

358

Journal historique de l'Établissement des Français à la Louisiane, 43.

359

Champigny au Ministre, 4 Novembre, 1693.

360

Relation de Penecaut. In my possession is a contemporary manuscript of this narrative, for which I am indebted to the kindness of General J. Meredith Reade.

361

Penecaut, Journal. Procès-verbal de la Prise de Possession du Pays des Nadouessioux, etc., par Nicolas Perrot, 1689. Fort Perrot seems to have been built in 1685, and to have stood near the outlet of the lake, probably on the west side. Perrot afterwards built another fort, called Fort St. Antoine, a little above, on the east bank. The position of these forts has been the subject of much discussion, and cannot be ascertained with precision. It appears by the Prise de Possession, cited above, that there was also, in 1689, a temporary French post near the mouth of the Wisconsin.

362

This weeping over strangers was a custom with the Sioux of that time mentioned by many early writers. La Mothe-Cadillac marvels that a people so brave and warlike should have such a fountain of tears always at command.

363

In 1702 the geographer De l'Isle made a remarkable MS. map entitled Carte de la Rivière du Mississippi, dressée sur les Mémoires de M. Le Sueur.

364

According to the geologist Featherstonhaugh, who examined the locality, this earth owes its color to a bluish-green silicate of iron.

365

Besides the long and circumstantial Relation de Penecaut, an account of the earlier part of La Sueur's voyage up the Mississippi is contained in the Mémoire du Chevalier de Beaurain, which, with other papers relating to this explorer, including portions of his Journal, will be found in Margry, vi. See also Journal historique de l'Établissement des Français à la Louisiane, 38-71.

366

Iberville à –, 15 Février, 1703 (Margry, vi. 180).

367

Bienville au Ministre, 6 Septembre, 1704.

368

Beaurain, Journal historique.

369

Hubert, Mémoire envoyé au Conseil de la Marine.

370

Penecaut, Relation, chaps. xvii., xviii. Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, i. 13-22. Various documents in Margry, vi. 193-202.

371

For an interesting contemporary map of the French establishment at Natchitoches, see Thomassy, Géologie pratique de la Louisiane.

372

Bénard de la Harpe, in Margry, vi. 264.

373

Beaurain says that each of these bands spoke a language of its own. They had horses in abundance, descended from Spanish stock. Among them appear to have been the Ouacos, or Huecos, and the Wichitas,—two tribes better known as the Pawnee Picts. See Marcy, Exploration of Red River.

374

Compare the account of La Harpe with that of the Chevalier de Beaurain; both are in Margry, vi. There is an abstract in Journal historique.

375

Relation de Bénard de la Harpe. Autre Relation du même. Du Tisné à Bienville. Margry, vi. 309, 310, 313.

376

Bienville au Conseil de Régence, 20 Juillet, 1721.

377

Instructions au Sieur de Bourgmont, 17 Janvier, 1722. Margry, vi. 389.

378

The French had at this time gained a knowledge of the tribes of the Missouri as far up as the Arickaras, who were not, it seems, many days' journey below the Yellowstone, and who told them of "prodigiously high mountains,"—evidently the Rocky Mountains. Mémoire de la Renaudière, 1723.

379

This meeting took place a little north of the Arkansas, apparently where that river makes a northward bend, near the twenty-second degree of west longitude. The Comanche villages were several days' journey to the southwest. This tribe is always mentioned in the early French narratives as the Padoucas,—a name by which the Comanches are occasionally known to this day. See Whipple and Turner, Reports upon Indian Tribes, in Explorations and Surveys for the Pacific Railroad (Senate Doc., 1853, 1854).

380

Relation du Voyage du Sieur de Bourgmont, Juin-Novembre, 1724, in Margry, vi. 398. Le Page du Pratz, iii. 141.

381

Journal du Voyage des Frères Mallet, présenté à MM. de Bienville et Salmon. This narrative is meagre and confused, but serves to establish the main points. Copie du Certificat donné à Santa Fé aux sept [huit] Français par le Général Hurtado, 24 Juillet, 1739. Père Rébald au Père de Beaubois, sans date. Bienville et Salmon au Ministre, 30 Avril, 1741, in Margry, vi. 455-468.

382

Instructions données par Jean-Baptiste de Bienville à Fabry de la Bruyère, 1 Juin, 1741. Bienville was behind his time in geographical knowledge. As early as 1724 Bénard de la Harpe knew that in ascending the Missouri or the Arkansas one was moving towards the "Western Sea,"—that is, the Pacific,—and might, perhaps, find some river flowing into it. See Routes qu'on peut tenir pour se rendre à la Mer de l'Ouest, in Journal historique, 387.

383

Extrait des Lettres du Sieur Fabry.