[I-36] Chippewas, or Ojibways—of whom Pike has much to say in this volume. The French nickname he uses, found also as Saulteurs, Saulteux, Saltiaux, Sautiers, Saltiers, Soutors, Soters, etc., was not given because these Indians were better jumpers than any others, but because the band of Chippewas whom it originally designated lived about the Sault de Sainte Marie, or St. Mary's falls, of Lake Superior. The term afterward became synonymous with Chippewas or Ojibways in a broad sense. On the map of Champlain's Voy., Paris, 1632, the Sault is marked du Gaston, for the brother of Louis XIII., and there located between Mer Douce and Grand Lac, i. e., between Lakes Huron and Superior. The chute seems to have been first heard of about 1616-18, from one Étienne Bruslé, or Stephen Broolay. In 1669, when the Jesuits reached the place, they changed the name to compliment the B. V. M. There is no doubt that Ojibwa or Ojibway is preferable to Chippewa or Chippeway, as a name of the tribe; but the latter is best established, both in official history and in geography, and may be most conveniently retained. These are the same word, etymologically, and are mere samples of the extraordinary profusion of forms in which the name exists. Very likely 50 different combinations of letters could be produced, some of them bearing little resemblance to one another. The meaning of the name is in chronic dispute. The linguistic sages seem to be agreed that the word has something to do with puckering; but whether it refers to the place which is puckered up between the two lakes above said, or to the way the moccasins of these Indians were puckered along a peculiar seam, or to the habits of these Indians of torturing with fire till the skins of their prisoners were puckered by burning to a crisp, are questions much agitated. The learned Anglojibway, Hon. W. W. Warren, historian of his tribe, takes the latter view, saying: "The word is composed of o-jib, 'pucker up,' and ub-way, 'to roast,' and it means, 'to roast till puckered up.'" Mr. Warren adduces also the name Abboinug, literally Roasters, given by the Ojibways to the Sioux, from the same horrid practice. He says that the Ojibways, as a distinct tribe or people, denominate themselves Awishinaubay. Probably the best account we possess of these Indians is that given in the Minn. Hist. Coll., V. of which is almost entirely devoted to the subject (pp. 1-510, 1885). This consists of Warren's history, based on traditions, and of Neill's, based on documents. The two thus admirably complement each other, and are preceded by a memoir of Warren, by J. Fletcher Williams.
[I-37] Our name of these Siouan Indians comes from their Algonkin appellation, which reached us through an assortment of French forms like Ouinipigou (as Vimont, Relation, 1640), etc., several of which have served as the originals of place-names now fixed in current usage. The term Puants, meaning Stinkers, was the French nickname. It is found as Puans, Pauns, Pawns, Paunts, etc., originated very early, and was much in vogue. On the old map cited in the foregoing note appears the legend "La Nation des Puans," though these Indians, with their Green bay, are marked on it N. instead of S. of Lakes Superior and Huron. The Stinkards gave occasion for a Latin synonym, as seen in the phrase "Magnus Lacus Algonquiniorum seu Lacus Fœtentium" of De Creux's map, Hist. Canada, Paris, 1664. They were also called Gens de Mer, Sea People. Jean Nicolet of Cherbourg in France, in the service of Champlain's Hundred Associates, believed to have been the first white man to enter Green bay, in July, 1634, calls them by their own name of themselves, which he renders Ochunkgraw, and which later acquired a variety of forms: see [note44], p. 39, and Butterfield's Disc. N. W., 1881, passim, esp. p. 38.
[I-38] Pike did not get far from Dubuque, if he left at 4 p. m. He probably stopped at the first convenient place to camp above the bluff, in the vicinity of Little Makoqueta r.—perhaps on the spot where Sinipi, Sinipee, or Sinope was started. In bringing him up to Dubuque from the Galena delta we have not much to note: Suisinawa, Sinsinawa, or Sinsinniwa r., right; Menomonee cr., right, and Catfish cr., left, between which is Nine Mile isl.; Massey, Ia., town at Dodge's branch; East Dubuque, Ill., rather below the large city of Dubuque. This is the oldest establishment in Iowa, as the Canadian Frenchman Julien Dubuque came there in 1788; extinction of Indian title and permanent settlement not till 1833; town incorporated 1837; city charter, 1840; pop. 3,100 in 1850: for the rest, see any gazetteer or cyclopedia. With this day's journey Pike finishes Illinois, which has been on his right all the way, and takes Wisconsin on that side; but Iowa continues on his left. The interstate line runs on the parallel of 42° 30´ N., which cuts through Dubuque.
[I-39] From Dubuque to Cassville is only 30 m., and Pike was somewhat advanced beyond Dubuque when he started. "The mouth of Turkey river," opp. which he camped, is of course a fixed point; and this shows the required reduction of his "40" miles to somewhat under 30. Determinations like these would be proof, were any needed, of the proposition advanced at the start, that the set of mileages with which we have to deal require a discount of 20 to 25 per cent. as a rule. In making his "two short reaches," Pike passed his Little Macoketh, the Little Makoqueta r., on his left, and the extensive slough on his right which receives the discharges of Platte and Grant rivers. He maps the former river: see the unnamed stream on the left, where "Mr. Dubuques Houfe" and "Lead Mines" are lettered. The other two rivers are not laid down; they run in Grant Co., Wis. Beltrami, II. 196, has a locality on the W. said to be 16 m. above Dubuque's mines, and to be called Prairie Macotche, "from the name of a savage who inhabited it." This item is no doubt imaginary; but Macotche is clearly the same word as Makoqueta. Pike's "long reach" is the 15 m. or more where the river is straight; it begins about Specht's Ferry (opp. which the Potosi canal was dug for an outlet of Grant r.) and extends to Turkey r. On the left, about halfway along this stretch, is the town of Waupeton (Wahpeton, Warpeton, etc.), at or near which the boundary between Dubuque and Clayton cos. strikes the Mississippi; the town of Buenavista, Clayton Co., Ia., is 3½ m. higher, between Plum and Panther crs. On the right a snicarty 11 m. long connects Grant r. with Jack Oak slough, at the head of which Cassville is situated, at the mouth of Furnace cr., and obliquely opposite the mouth of Turkey r. Some places which started along the river have failed, or changed their names; I do not now find Osceola, which maps mark near the mouth of Platte r.; nor Lafayette, which started about the present site of Potosi, and is now marked by some dilapidated chimneys you will observe when the C., B. and Q. train stops at a sort of station there; nor Frenchtown and Finlay, both on the Iowan side, the latter at the mouth of a creek called Bastard on a map of 1857; nor Frankford, at or near Buenavista; nor Winchester, about the mouth of Turkey r. Whether by accident or design, Grant r. is lettered "Le Grand R." on Nicollet's map. The Fox village, whose women and children were so frightened at the sight of the Americans, is marked by Pike on the N. side of Turkey r., near its mouth, about where Winchester seems to have stood. Present Turkey R. Junction of the C., M. and St. P. R. R. is on the other side. This stream is "Turkies" r. of Beltrami, II. p. 196.
[I-40] Probably 19 m., Cassville to Clayton, Ia., whence he could go comfortably for breakfast to Wyalusing, Wis., or still nearer the Wisconsin r. Above the mouth of Turkey r. the Miss. r. is divided into two courses, called the Casville slough on the Wisconsin side and the Guttenberg channel on the Iowan side. The latter is the broadest course, but the former is, or was some years ago, the main channel. The two come together 10 m. above Cassville, and a mile or two above Glen Haven, Wis. Guttenberg, Ia., is 8 m. above Cassville, at the mouth of Miners, Miner's, or Miners' cr.; it seems to have been formerly called Prairie La Port, as marked on Nicollet's map. Buck or Back cr. falls in a mile above. Approaching Clayton the banks are high and abrupt on the Iowan side, but on the other the hills recede, leaving a sloughy bottom into which several creeks empty, one of them Sandy cr., which comes by a sort of sand-bank. In this vicinity there was a place called Cincinnati, Wis., which seems to have disappeared, like another called Kilroy, on the Iowan side. Owen's map marks Killroy, a Clayton Co. map of 1857 has Keleroy, and Nicollet lays down the sizable creek near which it appears to have been situated, now known as the Sny Magill. The distance from Clayton to Wyalusing is 3 m.; thence it is about the same to the Wisconsin r.
[I-41] R. des Ouisconsins on Hennepin's map, 1683, and thus near the modern form, though in the plural for the Indians and with ou for the letter w that the F. alphabet lacks; in Hennepin's text, passim, Ouscousin, Oviscousin, Onisconsin, Misconsin, etc., according to typesetter's fancy; Ouisconsing, Misconsing, etc., in La Salle, and there also Meschetz Odeba; Miscou, Joliet on one of his maps, Miskonsing on another; Ouisconching, Perrot; Ouisconsinc, Lahontan's map; Ouisconsing, Franquelin's map, 1688; Ouisconsin, Carver; variable in Pike; Owisconsin and Owisconsing in Beltrami; Wisconsan, consistently, in Long; Wisconsin in Nicollet, and most writers since his time. Were it not for La Salle's appearance on the Illinois r. in 1680, and his sending Hennepin down it to the Mississippi, when he dispatched Michael Accault and Antoine Auguelle from Fort Crêvecœur to trade with the Chaas, the Wisconsin would rank first in historical significance as a waterway to the Mississippi from the Great Lakes; and such priority of date is offset in favor of the Wisconsin as the best and most traveled route from the lakes to points below the Falls of St. Anthony. It was already an Indian highway when it was first known to the whites, and did not cease to be such when the paddle was exchanged for the paddlewheel. A pretty full account of the Fox-Wisconsin route will be rendered beyond in this work. There are accounts of white settlements, or at least trading-posts, at Prairie du Chien about 1755; but white men may have lived in this vicinity, if not upon the spot, long before that, for Franquelin's map of 1688 locates a certain Fort St. Nicolas in what appears to be the position of P. du Chien, as well as I can judge. Moreover, Joliet and Marquette reached the Mississippi r. by way of the Fox-Wisconsin, June 15th or 17th, 1673. Our most definite information, however, dates from Oct. 15th, 1766, when Carver came to the spot. He reached it by the Fox-Wisconsin route, went up the Mississippi as high as the river St. Francis, wintered 1766-67 up the St. Peter, returned to P. du C. in the summer of 1767, went up the Mississippi again to the Chippewa r., and by that river back to the Great Lakes in July, 1767. He called the place Prairie le Chien; at the time of his visit it was "a large town containing about 300 families," with houses well built after the Indian fashion, and a great trade center for all the country roundabout. Carver also called the place Dog Plains. This is plain as a transl. of the F., and nobody doubts what Prairie du Chien denotes; what it connotes, however, or its actual implication, is another question which has been much mooted. Pike states elsewhere in this work that the place—which, by the way, he seldom if ever calls Prairie du Chien, but de Chein, des Cheins, etc.—was named for Indians who lived here, known as Reynards, etc., and would translate this F. nickname either Fox, Wolf, or Dog; in one place he has Dog's Plain. But Wolf or Dog does not seem to have been the name used for this tribe, which, when they were not called Ottagamies (or by some form of that word) were either the Reynards of the French or the Foxes of the English and Americans. Beltrami, II., p. 170, has that "it takes its name from an Indian family whom the first Frenchmen met there, called Kigigad or Dog." The whole weight of evidence is on the side of a personal name in the singular number. Long states that P. du C. was named after an Indian who lived there and was called the Dog. This may bear on Pike's statement, and the latter may be explicable upon the understanding that it refers to certain Indians, not necessarily of the Reynard tribe, who were called Dog Indians, i. e., The Dog's Indians. Nicollet marks the Indian town by the Chippewa name, Kipy Saging; Schoolcraft renders this Tipisagi, with reference to the treaty of Prairie du Chien. At the time of Long's 1823 visit the village had about 20 dwelling-houses besides the stores, most of them old and some decaying; the pop. was about 150. He located the place as in lat. 43° 3´ 31´´ N., long. 90° 52´ 30´´ W.; magn. var. 8° 48´ 52´´ E. Long speaks of one Mr. Brisbois, who had long resided there; of Mr. Rolette of the Am. Fur Co.; and of Augustin Roque, a half-breed and whole-fraud, to whom we shall refer again. Fort Crawford began to be built July 3d, 1816, by the troops under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Hamilton of North Carolina, who had attained that rank in the 3d Rifles Feb. 21st, 1814, and who resigned from the army March 8th, 1817; it would hold four or five companies, but was a mean establishment, poorly built on a bad site, too near Rousseau channel and the Kipy Saging slough. Long relates that in 1822 the fort as well as the village was inundated, so that the water stood three or four feet deep on the parade ground and ran into the officers' quarters and the barracks, forcing the garrison to camp for a month on higher ground. One of the blockhouses of the fort was built on a mound which was large enough to have supported the whole establishment, though only the stockade ran up to it. Through the attentions of Wm. Hancock Clark of Detroit, Mich., I am in possession of a water-color picture of the fort, roughly but tellingly done by his illustrious grandfather, William Clark, who with Governor Lewis Cass effected the important treaty of P. du C., Aug. 19th, 1825. This measures 18 × 15 inches, and shows a part of the stockade straggling up to that one of the blockhouses which was on the hill or mound, as described by Long. The general effect upon the beholder is to suggest something of a cross between a penitentiary and a stockyard, but unsafe for criminals and too small for cattle. The remains are extant, and may be observed about 40 rods W. of the railroad track, half a mile S. of the station of the C., B. and Q. This Fort Crawford must not be confounded with the earlier one of the same name, built in 1812 or sooner, at the N. end of the town, close to Rousseau channel. This site was near the positions of the two early French settlements, as distinguished from the later one that grew up S. of the site of the second Fort Crawford. Our actual settlement, continued on as the Prairie du Chien of to-day, only dates from 1835 or thereabouts, after the cessation of Indian hostilities in that quarter; the town is now the seat of Crawford Co., Wis. It is in the very S. W. corner of the county, which is separated from Grant Co. by the Wisconsin r. The bridge across the Mississippi to N. McGregor was built in 1873-74 and altered in 1888; C., M. and St. P. R. R.; Act of Congr. legalizing, June 6th, 1874. Notwithstanding its prominent situation, its distinguished history, and its comparative antiquity, Prairie du Chien has never amounted to much, and probably never will. There is nothing the matter with the place—the trouble is with the people. The place to-day cuts a lesser figure than it did in Pike's time, when it was our extreme frontier post in that direction, and it continued to be such until Fort St. Anthony (Snelling) was built. A part of the difficulty is ecclesiastical; no priest-ridden community can expect to keep up with the times. Prairie du Chien is an antique curio, comparing with the rest of Wisconsin very much as Quebec does with Ontario—and for similar reasons.
[I-42] The bluff W. bank of the Miss. r., opp. P. du C., was later called Pike's mountain; which, says Long's MSS. of 1817, No. I, fol. 37, as cited by Keating, 1824, received its name from having been recommended by the late General Pike, in his journal, "as a position well calculated for the construction of a military post to command the Mississippi." But this recommendation is nowhere made in Pike's journal: it is made in a [letter] which Pike wrote to General Wilkinson from P. du C., this date of Sept. 5th, as the above text says, and which formed in the orig. ed. Doc. No. 2 of the App. to Part I—the same that covered the Dubuque report. The particular hill that Pike picked out does not differ from the general range of bluffs which extend on that side of the river for several miles, all of about the same elevation. But to be particular, it was that hill which stands between McGregor and N. McGregor. The original settlement of McGregor was called in the first instance McGregor's landing. This was 1½ mile below N. McGregor, built at the mouth of the creek that comes down by Pike's mountain. This stream used to be known as Giard or Gayard r. (latter on Pike's map), and these were common spellings of the name of a person otherwise known as Gaillard, of mixed French-Indian blood, said to have been, with Antaya and Dubuque, one of the three first white settlers at Prairie du Chien, and by Long to have died suddenly during the latter's expedition up the Wisconsin r. The present name of the creek is Bloody Run, which may easily have acquired if it did not deserve the designation in some one or more of the uncounted fierce collisions of this blood-brued region. But tradition, if not authentic history, ascribes the origin of the sanguinary title to the Nimrodic exploits of the celebrated Captain Martin Scott, a mighty hunter who used to kill so much game in that vicinity that he was said to have made this stream literally run with blood. But so much used to be told about Captain Scott—on whom was fathered in those parts the story of the coon which promised to come down if he would not shoot, elsewhere connected with the name of Davy Crockett—that the legends concerning him may pass for what they may be worth. The mouth of this creek is 3 m. below that of Yellow r., and the boundary between Clayton and Allamakee cos. strikes the Mississippi between the two, though very near the mouth of the latter.
[I-43] See [note anteà, p. 5], where the phrase Cap au Grès is mentioned. Pike's term Petit Gris, elsewhere Petit Grey, would be preferably rendered Petit Cap au Grès, in the peculiar system of phonetics which our Parisian friends are wont to enjoy. This Little Sandstone bluff extends up the Wisconsin in the direction of Bridgeport. A small creek which comes down a break in the bluff, and empties into the N. side of the Wisconsin a mile above its mouth, is also named Petit Gris or Grès. There was also a Grand Grès in that vicinity—to judge from a creek I find on some maps by the name of Grandgris—perhaps the branch of the Wisconsin now known as Kickapoo r. Pike's recommendation of the Petit Grès as a military site was never acted upon.
[I-44] I think Pike never once hits what a grammarian would consider the proper way to write this phrase. Wherever he happens upon it, the gender or the number gets awry. The hitch in pluralizing seems to be because the first s is sounded before the initial vowel of the next word, but the last s is silent, because the French seldom articulate their letters at par. Folle avoine, literally "fool oat"—a phrase also reflected in the Latin term avena fatua—is the Canadian French name of the plant known to botanists as Zizania aquatica, and to us common folks as wild rice, wild oats, water-rice, water-oats, Indian or Canadian rice or oats, etc. My friend Prof. Lester F. Ward, whom I desired to prepare the botanical definitions for the Century Dictionary, and who did write them, with the assistance of Mr. F. H. Knowlton, after the lamented death of Prof. Sereno Watson, Prof. Asa Gray's successor at Cambridge, defines Zizania as "a genus of grasses, of the tribe Oryzeæ. It is characterized by numerous narrow unisexual spikelets in a long, loose androgynous panicle, each spikelet having two glumes and six stamens or two more or less connate styles." This would be news to the Menominees, though these Indians subsisted so largely upon the seeds of the plant that the French called them les Folles Avoines, and the English knew them as the Rice-eaters. This rice grows in profusion in all the lacustrine regions of the N. W., and is regularly harvested by all the Indians of that country, to be sold or bartered as well as eaten by them. Its great size, its purplish spike-like heads when ripe, and its omnipresence, render it one of the most conspicuous products of the region. The Indians do not cut the stalk as we reap our cereals, because the loose grains fall so readily that the easiest way to gather them is to simply shake or beat them into a canoe. As to the polyglot council which Pike held with the Puants, we may hope without believing that the Winnebagoes were deeply impressed by the combination of New Jersey and Canadian French which fell upon their ears through the Dakotan tongue. It is true that the Winnebagoes come of Siouan stock, and so have some linguistic affinity with the Sioux; but the dialect they acquired is conceded by all philologists to be peculiar to themselves, and peculiarly difficult to utter. The Winnebago spoken at this council was probably as different from the Dakotan as Latin is from its cognate Greek, or even as Pike's French was from that spoken in Montreal or Paris. The Winnebagoes call themselves by a name which is rendered Otchagra by Long, Howchungera by Featherstonhaugh, Hotcañgara by Powell; also Ochungarand, Hohchunhgrah, and in various other ways which authors prefer and printing-offices permit: see [note37], p. 31. Since Charlevoix they have been known as Puans, Puants, or Stinkers—and they deserve to be. Their vernacular is noted for the predominance of the growler or dog-letter r, litera canina of the Latin grammarians.
[I-45] Billon's Ann. St. Louis, 1804-21, pub. 1888, p. 382, is obviously in error in stating that Pierre Rousseau embarked with Pike at St. Louis; for here we have him first hired at P. du C. I know nothing further of the man; but he is doubtless the one from whom Rousseau channel of the Miss. r., which runs past P. du C. on the Wis. side, as distinguished from the main steamboat channel past McGregor on the Iowan side, derived its name.