This neighborhood abounds in Indian relics. The village graveyard appears to have been on a rising ground, near the river immediately in front of the town of Utica. This is the only part of the river bottom, from this point to the Mississippi, not liable to inundation in the spring floods. It now forms part of a farm occupied by a tenant of Mr. James Clark. Both Mr. Clark and his tenant informed me that every year great quantities of human bones and teeth were turned up here by the plough. Many implements of stone are also found, together with beads and other ornaments of Indian and European fabric.
[ [145] "Les paroles les plus touchantes."—Hennepin (1683), 139. The later editions add the modest qualification, "que je pus."
[ [146] Peoria was the name of one of the tribes of the Illinois. Hennepin's dates here do not exactly agree with those of La Salle (Lettre du 29 Sept., 1680), who says that they were at the Illinois village on the first of January, and at Peoria Lake on the fifth.
[ [147] At least, it is so now at this place. Perhaps, in La Salle's time, it was not wholly so; for there is evidence, in various parts of the West, that the forest has made considerable encroachments on the open country.
[ [148] Hennepin (1683), 142.
[ [149] Hennepin (1683), 144-149. The later editions omit a part of the above.
[ [150] "Un sauvage, nommé Monso, qui veut dire Chevreuil."—La Salle. Probably Monso is a misprint for Mouso, as mousoa is Illinois for chevreuil, or deer.
[ [151] Hennepin (1683), 151, (1704), 205; Le Clerc, ii. 157; Mémoire du Voyage de M. de la Salle. This is a paper appended to Frontenac's Letter to the Minister, 9 Nov., 1680. Hennepin prints a translation of it in the English edition of his later work. It charges the Jesuit Allouez with being at the bottom of the intrigue. Compare Lettre de La Salle, 29 Sept., 1680 (Margry, ii. 41), and Mémoire de La Salle, in Thomassy, Géologie Pratique de la Louisiane, 203.
The account of the affair of Monso, in the spurious work bearing Tonty's name, is mere romance.
[ [152] The above is a paraphrase, with some condensation, from Hennepin, whose account is substantially identical with that of La Salle.