Red Lake is a comparatively small lake at the head of a branch of the Bourbon River, which is called by some Red River. Its form is nearly round, and about sixty miles in circumference. On one side of it is a tolerable large island, close by which a small river enters. It bears almost south-east both from Lake Winnepeek and from Lake du Bois. The parts adjacent are very little known, or frequented, even by the savages themselves.
Not far from this Lake, a little to the south-west, is another called White Bear Lake, which is nearly about the size of the last mentioned. The waters that compose this Lake are the most northern of any that supply the Mississippi, and may be called with propriety its most remote source. It is fed by two or three small rivers or rather large brooks.
A few miles from it, to the south-east, are a great number of small lakes, none of which are more than ten miles in circumference, that are called the Thousand Lakes. In the adjacent country is reckoned the finest hunting for furs of any on this continent; the Indians who hunt here seldom returning without having their canoes loaded as deep as they can swim.
Having just before observed that this Lake is the utmost northern source of the Mississippi, I shall here further remark, that before this river enters the Gulph of Mexico, it has not run less, through all its meanderings, than three thousand miles; or, in a strait line from north to south, about twenty degrees, which is nearly fourteen hundred English miles.
These Indians informed me, that to the north-west of Lake Winnepeek lies another, whose circumference vastly exceeded any they had given me an account of. They describe it as much larger than Lake Superior. But as it appears to be so far to the north-west, I should imagine that it was not a lake, but rather the Archipelago or broken waters that form the communication between Hudson’s Bay and the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean.
There are an infinite number of small lakes, on the more western parts of the western head-branches of the Mississippi, as well as between these and Lake Winnepeek, but none of them are large enough to suppose either of them to be the lake or waters meant by the Indians.
They likewise informed me, that some of the northern branches of the Messorie and the southern branches of the St. Pierre have a communication with each other, except for a mile; over which they carry their canoes. And by what I could learn from them, this is the road they take when their war parties make their excursions upon the Pawnees and Pawnawnees, nations inhabiting some branches of the Messorie River. In the country belonging to these people it is said, that Mandrakes are frequently found, a species of root resembling human beings of both sexes; and that these are more perfect than such as are discovered about the Nile in Nether-Ethiopia.
A little to the north-west of the heads of the Messorie and the St. Pierre, the Indians further told me, that there was a nation rather smaller and whiter than the neighbouring tribes, who cultivate the ground, and (as far as I could gather from their expressions) in some measure, the arts. To this account they added that some of the nations, who inhabit those parts that lie to the west of the Shining Mountains, have gold so plenty among them that they make their most common utensils of it. These mountains (which I shall describe more particularly hereafter) divide the waters that fall into the South Sea from those that run into the Atlantic.
The people dwelling near them are supposed to be some of the different tribes that were tributary to the Mexican kings, and who fled from their native country to seek an asylum in these parts, about the time of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, more than two centuries ago.
As some confirmation of this supposition it is remarked, that they have chosen the most interior parts for their retreat, being still prepossessed with a notion that the sea-coasts have been infested ever since with monsters vomiting fire, and hurling about thunder and lightning; from whose bowels issued men, who, with unseen instruments, or by the power of magick, killed the harmless Indians at an astonishing distance. From such as these, their fore-fathers (according to a tradition among them that still remains unimpaired) fled to the retired abodes they now inhabit. For as they found that the floating monsters which had thus terrified them could not approach the land, and that those who had descended from their sides did not care to make excursions to any considerable distance from them, they formed a resolution to betake themselves to some country, that lay far from the sea-coasts, where only they could be secure from such diabolical enemies. They accordingly set out with their families, and after a long peregrination, settled themselves near these mountains, where they concluded they had found a place of perfect security.