The same day [the 24th] the Canadians, who had been sent off on the 22d arrived without having found the road which led to the Ayavois and Otoctates.
... On the 16th [of Nov.] the Scioux returned to their village, and it was reported that the Ayavois and Otoctatas were going to establish themselves towards the Missouri river, near the Maha [Omahaw], who dwell in that region.
In May, 1701, Le Sueur left Fort d’Huillier in charge of M. d’Evaque, a Canadian gentleman, with a force of twelve Frenchmen, while he himself in his felucca with the rest of his men returned to Mobile, carrying with him “three canoe loads,” or “four thousand pounds,” of the “green earth,” supposed to be oxide of copper, but which was really from a kind of shelly marly strata, interposed between the fossiliferous limestone and the sandstone of that region, that was colored bluish-green by silicate of iron. We next find Le Sueur—(who it has been stated was the father of the three distinguished brothers D’Iberville, DeBienville, and Sauvolle)[75]—in the summer of 1701 accompanying D’Iberville, the Governor of Louisiana, on his return to France, and assisting him while on shipboard in concocting a Memorial on the Mississippi Valley, addressed to the French government: in which D’Iberville says:
He [M. Le Sueur] has spoken to me of another, [nation] which he calls the Mahas, [Omahaw], composed of more than twelve hundred families [!], the Ayooues and the Octootatas, their neighbors, are about three hundred families. They occupy the lands between the Mississippi and the Missouri, about one hundred leagues from the Illinois. These savages do not know the use of (fire?) arms....
The memorial, (a manuscript copy of which, quoted by Professor Neill in his Minnesota history, is in possession of the Historical Society of that State), contains the first attempt we have upon the record at a Census of the Tribes of the Mississippi, and partially of the Missouri Valleys: made thirty-four years before the French Census of the Cass manuscript[76]—a census formerly claimed as being the very first extant—so claimed by Schoolcraft, in the third volume of his Collections.
Penicaud, the carpenter, states, that D’Evaque and the men Le Sueur left in charge of the Blue Earth post, abandoned it, and returned to Mobile [arriving there on the 3d of March], 1703, having left, as they alleged, on account of being warred upon “by the nations of Maskoutens and Foxes,” and “seeing that he was out of powder and lead.” Le Sueur for several years after his operations on the Blue-Earth was kept busy leading expeditions against the Natchez and other Indians of the southwest; and is said to have died[77] on the road during one of them.
Some further information in regard to the Ioway is gathered from a chart of the northwestern part of Louisiana, by “William De L’Isle, de l’Academy Royale des Sciences, et Premier Geographe du Roy: a Paris: 1703” in the preparation of which Le Sueur probably assisted by his notes and observations.[78] A section of this map, (lithographed for Neill’s History of Minnesota), shows a traders trail marked “Chemin des Voyageurs,” across the State of Iowa, commencing at the Mississippi, a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin, and following west by a little north until in the vicinity of Spirit Lake, it struck just below the lowest of the lakes which are at the head of the Little Sioux river, upon which lower lake is marked “Village des Aiaoues ou Paoutez” (Pähutch’æ); then continuing due westward towards the Big Sioux this Chemin du Voyageurs bends a little southward towards the mouth of that river; on which river, near the Missouri, three or four villages of “Maha” (Omahaw), are marked. Besides these a couple of minor “Aianouez” villages are likewise set down at the west end of the Chemin des Voyageurs where it strikes the Big Sioux, which is apparently about the junction of “Fish Creek” with it: [See Waw-non-que-skoon-a’s map of Ioway migrations in Vol. III, Schoolcraft, page 256],[79] and again further westward, considerably beyond the western termination of the “Chemin” on the James River, four minor villages of “Aiaouez” are also noted: while far south by a little east of the first mentioned main “Village des Aiaoues ou Paoutez,” upon the north or “left” bank of the Missouri river at a point nearly due west from the mouth of the “Des Moines ou le Moingona,” we find located the “Yoways,” and a few miles above them on the same side, the “Les Octotata”: which locations were not a great distance from the spot where the Ioway and Otoe now live upon one common “Reservation,” on the opposite side of the Missouri just within Nebraska.
ANTE-WHITE HISTORY OF THE IOWAY
