[III'-16] For Nacogdoches see [next note]. The above lacuna in the text may be presumptively supplied from Pike's map, where the post is marked to that effect.
[III'-17] Natches and Neches are obviously the same Indian word, the root of which appears in Natchitoches and various other names. The two have run through the usual range of variation in spelling in the course of writing and printing; but of late years the form Natchez has become fixed as the name of the well-known city on the Mississippi below Vicksburg, while the designation of the river has perhaps acquired stability in the form of Neches. The latter is the principal stream between the Trinity and the Sabine; it runs south approximately parallel with both, and falls into the Gulf through Sabine l., as the Sabine does; in fact, it is collateral with the Sabine, and has been considered a branch of the latter. The Spanish trail crossed it high up. Its own main branch is that eastern one known as Rio Angelina or Angeline r., which Pike crosses on the 24th; and E. of a small branch of the latter was the site of Nacogdoches. It is now an obscure village, pop. about 1,200, seat of the county of its own name, which occupies a space between Angelina and Atoyac rivers; but the place is an old one, which, like all the others which the Spanish trail went through, has a long ethnic, civil, and military history. Neches or Natches r. is to be particularly noted as the ancient seat of a tribe of Indians who, though a mere handful a century ago, left their name as a legacy for all time. Sibley (l. c., p. 43) speaks of "a small river, a branch of the Sabine, called the Naches," on which lived the "Inies, or Tachies (called indifferently by both names)," and adds: "From the latter name the name of the province of Tachus or Taxus is derived," i. e., Texas. Among the permutations of the word and its derivatives not the least singular is the English adjective and noun Texican—a word obviously formed upon the model of Mexican from Mexico. I suppose this is modern, and what may be termed cowboy dialect; I used to hear it constantly when I was in those parts.
[III'-18] Three lacunæ in this sentence, two of which I fill, omitting the other, which was a long dash in place of the Frenchman's name. We seem bound by Pike's map to supply "Toyac" as the missing name of the river he means, though there is certainly no such large river as he lays down between the Neches and the Sabine. The map is evidently at fault here, for he runs the Neches into Trinity r., and thus into Galveston bay, and his "Rio Toyac" comes nearer exhibiting the proper relations of the Neches with the Sabine. Exactly what his great "Rio Toyac" may pass for is thus questionable, but the "little river" of the text, which he crosses after leaving Nacogdoches, must be the present Atoyac r. (the branch of the Angelina which separates Nacogdoches Co. from San Augustin Co., for the most part). The route continues to-day past San Augustin, which was on the Spanish trail, and on or near another small branch of the Angelina, which runs between San Augustin Co. and Sabine Co. The place where he stopped on the 28th, only three hours' march from the Sabine, and where he found both Frenchmen and Americans, was evidently the exact locality of which Sibley speaks concerning certain Caddoan Indians known as Aliche, Eyeish, or Eyish. They were then on the verge of extinction, having been in 1801 reduced by the smallpox till only 25 of them were left in 1805. Writing in the latter year he says (l. c., p. 43) that "they were, some years ago, a considerable nation, and lived on a bayou which bears their name, which the road from Nachitoch to Nacogdoches crosses, about 12 miles west of Sabine r., on which a few French and American families are settled." These data fix Pike's camp with precision.
[III'-19] The former office of the Sabine or Mexican r. in delimiting Spanish from American possessions continues to-day in so far as it represents the boundary between Texas and Louisiana. On crossing it, our fervid young patriot passed from the military protection of his Catholic Majesty to that of his Brother Jonathan and Uncle Sam—the former of these two, by the way, being as actual a person as King Charles IV. of Spain, and no other than Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut. The Spanish trail entered what is now the State of Louisiana at a point between Hamilton and Sabinetown, both of which were places on the Texan side of the river. The crossing was but little above Sabinetown, and between two small watercourses known as Bayou San Patricio and Bayou San Miguel, both running in Sabine Co., La. His camp of the 30th seems to have been between Bayou Miguel and the next below, now called Lennan; and these two I suppose to be the ones he lays down as running into the Sabine together, as they do, pretty nearly.
[III'-20] General Wilkinson's "marquee," the location of which Pike took pleasure in imagining, was the large tent used by field and general officers; the name is not often heard now, though the word is hardly obsolete. Old Fort Jesup was built directly on the continuation of the Spanish trail in Louisiana, rather less than half-way from the Sabine to Red r. A short distance S. of this was a place whose name appears on various maps as Many, Manny, Maney, and by accident Mary—the latter on Emory's, 1857-58, which I think is one of the most accurate and altogether useful maps ever drawn to a scale of 1 : 6,000,000. A glance at this shows Pike's trail from the Rio Grande to the Red r. in all its main features; and though many desirable details are necessarily lacking, not one is misleading.
[III'-21] This short clause brings up a number of interesting points. The hill is among the slight elevations which together form the water-shed between the Sabine and Red r. This rise of ground corresponds in a general way with the boundary between Sabine and Nachitoches cos. in Louisiana, parting the numberless and mostly unnamed small waters which make on either hand for their respective outlets in the two rivers. Pike is already on the Red River side, among the runs which discharge into the body of water known as the Spanish l., and which finds its way into Red r. by various channels. This is the place where "anciently stood," as he informs us, the village of the mysterious tribe of Indians he calls Adyes and Adayes. These have a long history; but the literature of the subject is mainly a presentation of our ignorance. Powell says that the first mention of them occurs in the Naufragios of Cabeça de Vaca, who calls them Atayos, about 1540, and that they are also noted by various early French explorers of the Mississippi, as d'Iberville and Joutel. The fortified camp of which Pike speaks was built in 1715 and known as the Mission of Adayes. From documents preserved in San Antonio de Bexar, examined by Mr. A. S. Gatschet in 1886, it appears that 14 Adai families emigrated to a place S. of that town in 1792; these were afterward lost sight of. According to Baudry de Lozieres, as cited by Powell, 100 Adaizans were left at home in 1802. Turning to Sibley (l. c. p. 42), we find that in 1805 there were 20 men and more women living "about 40 miles from Natchitoches, below the Yattassees [III'-22] Natchitoches, or some other form of this word, was originally the name of a certain tribe of Indians of the Southern Caddoan family, and of the island on which they dwelt in Red r., at the site of the town which later arose there and is still so called. We hear of these people and their place very early in French colonial history. In Sept., 1688, Henri de Tonti was visited at his Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, by Couture, one of his men whom he had left at Arkansas Post in 1686, who apprized him of La Salle's tragic death. He set off (he says, in Oct., 1689—probably a wrong date from memory) in Dec., 1688, descended the Illinois and Miss. rivers to Red r., and went up this, reaching the Natchitoches Feb. 17th and the Caddodaquis Mar. 28th, 1689: so Parkman's La Salle, etc., p. 439. He was told that some of the assassins or those in the plot to murder their leader were at a village of the Naouadiches, some 85 leagues S. W., whither he went, but found no trace of Hiens and his confederates. After much suffering, including an illness at his Arkansas Post, he regained Fort St. Louis Sept., 1689: Wallace, Hist. Ill. and La., 1893, p. 188 seq. According to this authority the present town dates from Jan., 1717, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, governor of Louisiana under Crozat, sent a sergeant and some soldiers to establish a post on the island, which was commanded ca. 1721-28 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (b. Quebec, Sept. 18th, 1676, d. post 1731). This notable character, uncle of D'Iberville's wife, Chevalier, etc., is the "Mons. St. Dennie" of Sibley's notice of the Natchitoches, p. 49, where it is said he was still in command after the Natchez massacre of 1728; "the Indians called him the Big Foot, were fond of him, for he was a brave man." According to Gayarré, Hist. La., II. p. 355, the foreign population of Natchitoches was 811 by a census made under Gov. O'Reilly, ca. 1769, or when the French had been in Louisiana 70 years. Sibley, writing at Natchitoches Apr. 5th, 1805, says that an elderly French gentleman then living had shortly before informed him that the informant remembered when the Natchitoches were 600 men strong: this should represent ca. 3,000 total souls. [III'-23] Constant Freeman of Massachusetts had been a captain in the Revolutionary army when he was made major of the 1st Regiment of Artillerists and Engineers, Feb. 28th, 1795; promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of Artillerists, Apr. 1st, 1802; transferred to corps of Artillery, May 12th, 1814; and honorably discharged June 15th, 1815; he had been brevetted colonel July 10th, 1812, and he died Feb. 27th, 1824. Elijah Strong of Connecticut was an ensign of the 1st sub-Legion Feb. 23d, 1793; lieutenant, July 1st, 1794; transferred to 1st Infantry, Nov. 1st, 1796; captain, Oct. 23d, 1799; major, 7th Infantry, Dec. 15th, 1808; and died June 9th, 1811. Charles Wollstonecraft of England was appointed from Pennsylvania to be a lieutenant of the 2d Artillerists and Engineers, June 4th, 1798; he became a lieutenant of Artillerists, Apr. 1st, 1802; captain, Mar. 15th, 1805; was transferred to the corps of Artillery, May 12th, 1814; on the 15th of March, 1815, he was brevetted major for 10 years' faithful service in one grade, and Sept. 28th, 1817, he died.