For Major Bennett Riley see our volume xix, p. 185, note 25 (Gregg).—Ed.
[207] This law was passed in the first session of the twenty-second congress, and was merely a portion of an act to create an Indian commissioner. It caused but little debate, and apparently was fathered by General Ashley and others cognizant of conditions in the fur-trade. For the consternation it created among the traders consult Chittenden, Fur-Trade, index.—Ed.
[208] According to the treaty held at St. Louis in 1832, with the Kickapoo chiefs, a deputation was to visit the new territory in Kansas and agree to the lands chosen. This was accordingly done in November, and this would appear to be among the arrivals early in the spring of 1833 to take possession of the new reservation.—Ed.
[209] Lewis and Clark apply this term with different orthography (Waucarba, wacandda) to the island above Fort Leavenworth now known as Kickapoo. The river is here compressed into a narrow space, above which it widens considerably. See Thwaites, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, i, p. 64.—Ed.
[210] For this detachment under Captain Martin, see our volume xiv, p. 175.—Ed.
[211] The creek was so named by Lewis and Clark because its mouth was passed by them on July 4, 1804. It is a small stream entering the Missouri near the boundaries of Doniphan and Atchison counties, Kansas. According to Lewis and Clark this was the second old Kansa village, the first being just above Kickapoo Island. If the Spanish ever had a post in this vicinity, it must have been in the capacity of succeeding (after 1764) to the possession of the old French post among the Kansa Indians. See on this subject, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, i, pp. 64-68, and notes.—Ed.
[212] Joseph Robidoux, whose trading post was on the site of the future city of St. Joseph, which took its name from its founder. The Robidoux were a family of fur-traders. The father, Joseph, came from Montreal to Kaskaskia, and having won a competence removed to St. Louis, where at his house the first territorial legislature of Missouri met in 1812. Joseph, jr., was born in 1783, and early entered the fur-trade. Lewis and Clark met "young Mr. Robidoux" on their return journey (1806), and scrutinized his license with some suspicion. Lewis also complained of the loyalty of the elder trader, saying that he enticed the Indians from their allegiance to the United States. The younger Robidoux lived for many years at the post where Maximilian met him—in 1868 dying at this place, where the city had already sprung up around him. See sketch in Joseph Tasse, Canadiens du Nord-Ouest (Montreal, 1878), ii, p. 131.—Ed.
[213] The Joways had exchanged their blankets and other effects for brandy. White settlers have already established themselves fifteen or sixteen miles within the Indian territory, who make whisky, and sell it excessively cheap to the Indians, by which these people are ruined. The distance is only eight miles from Roubedoux trading house to the Little Platte River; and between these two rivers and the high land, is the village of the Joways.—Maximilian.
[214] This is, doubtless, the same river which Bradbury, in his Travels, calls Naduet River.—Maximilian.
[215] For Captain Martin see James's Long's Expedition, in our volume xiv, p. 175, note 142. Maximilian would here appear to be confused. Martin passed the winter of 1818 to 1819 on Cow Island (see note 208, ante, p. 256). He had, however, a hunting camp in this vicinity.—Ed.