"After consulting our maps I concluded that while Schoolcraft and Nicollet had found Itasca by going up the river through Lakes Winnibegoshish, Cass and Bemidji, a more direct course would be by way of Leech Lake and the Kabekanka River.
"A careful study of the route to Leech Lake, with a few valuable suggestions from Warren Leland, of Brainerd, one of its oldest pioneers, led us to seek conveyance to the former place over what is known in Northern Minnesota as the Government Road. This road stretches for seventy-five miles, through immense pine forests, and the only habitations to be seen from it are the 'half-way houses' erected for the accommodation of teamsters who are engaged in hauling government supplies; and the occasional wigwams of wandering Indians.
"While at the Leech Lake Agency it was our good fortune to meet the post-missionary, Rev. Edwin Benedict; Major A. C. Ruffe, the Indian Agent; Paul Beaulieu, the veteran Government Interpreter; White-Cloud, chief of the Mississippi Indians; Flat-Mouth, head chief of the Chippewas, and others well known at the Agency. Through conversations with these parties I learned that pioneers of that region were of the opinion that the lake located by Schoolcraft was the source of the Mississippi, but that the Indians invariably claimed that the Great River had its origin above and beyond Itasca, in a beautiful lake known to them as Pokegama, signifying the 'place where the waters gather.'
"Beaulieu, who is perhaps the best authority in Minnesota, having lived for more than sixty years within its borders, said that Chenowagesic, who afterwards became my chief guide, was the most intelligent Chippewa of his acquaintance, had made his home for many years in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Mississippi, and that he had always asserted, when maps were shown him, that a lake above Itasca would in time change a feature of those maps and confirm his statement that Lake Itasca could not longer maintain its claim to being the fountain-head of the Great River.
"Three days were spent at Leech Lake, during which time we secured an interpreter, Indian guides and birch bark canoes. Everything being in order we launched our canoes on the morning of July seventeenth. Wishing, as previously explained, to approach Itasca by a different route from that adopted by Schoolcraft and Nicollet who went up the Mississippi from Lake Winnibegoshish, I crossed Leech Lake and ascended the Kabekanka River, thence proceeding in a direct westerly course through twenty-one lakes, alternated by as many portages, reaching Itasca between two and three o'clock on the afternoon of the twenty-first. The region traversed, we were told by the guides, had never before been trodden by white men; and considering the nature of the country it is not to be wondered at, as swamps, floating bogs, and dense undergrowth were encountered throughout the entire journey.
"The work of coasting Itasca for its feeders was begun at an early hour on the morning of the twenty-second. We found the outlets of six small streams, two having well-defined mouths, and four filtering into the lake through bogs. The upper or southern end of the south-western arm of Lake Itasca is heavily margined with reeds and rushes, and it was not without considerable difficulty that we forced our way through this barrier into the larger of the two open streams which enter at this point. This stream, at its mouth, is seven feet wide and about three feet deep.
"Slow and sinuous progress of between two and three hundred yards brought us to a blockade of logs and shallow water. Determined to float in my canoe upon the surface of the lake towards which we were paddling, I directed the guides to remove the obstructions, and continued to urge the canoes rapidly forward, although opposed by a strong and constantly increasing current. On pulling and pushing our way through a network of rushes, similar to that encountered on leaving Lake Itasca, the cheering sight of a tranquil and limpid sheet of water burst upon our view.
"This lake, the Chippewa name of which is Pokegama, is about a mile and a half in its greatest diameter, covers an area of two hundred and fifty acres, and would be nearly an oval in form but for a single promontory, which extends its shores into the lake, so as to give it in outline the appearance of a heart. Its feeders are three small creeks, two of which enter on the right and left of the headland, and have their origin in springs at the foot of sand hills from two to three miles distant. The third stream is but little more than a rivulet of a mile in length, has no clearly defined course, and is the outlet of a small pond or lakelet to the south-westward.
"The latitude of the lake in question is about 47°; its height above the Atlantic Ocean 1,582 feet, and its distance from the Gulf of Mexico 3,184 miles.
"The statement that the lake now very generally accepted by geographers, and educational publishers as the True Source of the Mississippi was so regarded prior to the organization of my expedition cannot be substantiated; for, on the contrary, both press and people throughout Minnesota were ignorant of its existence, so far as we were able to ascertain by diligent inquiry from Saint Paul to Brainerd; and, in fact, I may add that the missionary, Indian agent, and post-trader at Leech Lake knew no other source of the Mississippi than Lake Itasca, except what they had been told by my chief guide, Chenowagesic, and a few other Chippewas in that vicinity. Barrett Channing Paine, fully confirms this statement in his letters to the Brainerd, Minneapolis, and Saint Paul papers of that period. These letters prove most conclusively that the people of Northern Minnesota had no knowledge whatever of the lake beyond Itasca until its existence was announced by me through the medium of the press in 1881.