It may Heare Be Remarked that. We Ware treeted Heare With more Coolness than amongest any Indeans or Spanierds We meet With But We feel greatful to mr Boggs for His Polightness—He in the morning Precure for us a Small Beef—and mr Sibley Sent us Some flour and Bacon—Which With Corn meel and Bacon We Purchased from one of the Citisons We maid out Prete Well—for two days to Rest and Purchased two Conus [canoes] With a platform and Shiped all our Baggage With our Selves leaveing four men to Bring on the Enty Horses to Cortsand Ca [?]—and We proceded to St lewis—Wheare I Remained two days and then took a pasage In the Steem Boat Calhoon to lewisvill and from that In a Small Steem Boat to Cincinati—and got Home[175] on the 27th day of July 1822—haveing [been] gon thirteen months and thirteen days
FOOTNOTES
[1] Present name of the town which has grown up on the site of the original military post, in Sebastian Co., Ark., about 5 m. S. W. of Van Buren, on the right bank of the Arkansaw river, at the mouth of Poteau river, immediately on the W. border of the State, where the river passes from the Indian Territory into Arkansas; lat. 35° 22´ N., long. 94° 28´ W.; pop. in 1890, 11,311. The original name of the then important frontier locality was Belle Pointe. “The site of Fort Smith was selected by Major Long, in the fall of 1817, and called Belle Point in allusion to its peculiar beauty. It occupies an elevated point of land, immediately below the junction of the Arkansa and the Poteau, a small tributary from the southwest. Agreeably to the orders of General Smith, then commanding the 9th military department, a plan of the proposed work was submitted to Major Bradford, at that time, and since commandant at the post, under whose superintendence the works have been in part completed” in Sept., 1820: Long’s Exp. ii, 1823, p. 260, where description of the place follows.
From this starting-point our author proceeds on the direct road to the Neosho river, vicinity of present Fort Gibson, Ind. Terr.
[2] The common cane, Arundinaria macrosperma, which forms extensive brakes.
[3] Tahlequah or Talequah, one of several small tributaries of the Arkansaw from the N., below the Illinois river; on which latter is the town of Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Nation, Indian Terr., about 45 m. N. W. of Fort Smith.
[4] Illinois river, the largest tributary of the Arkansaw from the N. between Fort Smith and Fort Gibson: see Pike, ed. of 1895, p. 558, and add: “The Illinois is called by the Osages, Eng-wah-con-dah or Medicine-stone creek,” Long, ii, 1823, p. 255. Fowler crosses the Illinois some 6 or 8 m. from its confluence with the Arkansaw.
[5] Bean’s or Bean and Saunders’ salt works were begun in the spring of 1820 about a mile up a small creek which flows into the Illinois at or near the place where Fowler crosses the latter, some 6 m. from the Arkansaw; description in Long, ii, 1823, p. 254.
[6] The Neosho, for which see Pike, ed. of 1895, pp. 395, 397-401, etc. “The Neosho, or Grand river, better known to the hunters by the singular designation of the Six Bulls,” Long, ii, 1823, p. 253. This is a name which I missed in editing Pike. On the left bank of the Neosho, near its mouth, is Fort Gibson, which was not in existence in 1821.