USA > Missouri > A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union, Volume I > Part 27
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A path led from the Mississippi along the Cuivre to the head- waters of this stream. From the highest point among the sources of the Cuivre on the prairie between the Missouri and the Mississippi over- looking the country the extensive woods of Loutre Lick were visible in
194 Ibid., p. 415.
195 Long's Expedition, vol. i., p. 406. 196 Ibid., p. 420.
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early days. 197 From this point, in addition to the trace to Loutre's Lick,198 and thence across the Missouri to the mouth and up the Gasconade, also another path led west through Grand Prairie for thirty miles and thence to Thrall's settlement, now in Boone county, thirty miles farther on.199
One of the warpaths of the Saukees and Foxes to the Osage villages south of the Missouri was laid across the rugged country flanking the Gasconade.200 The war trace of the Pottowatomies to the Osage country also followed the Gasconade.201 An Osage trail led from their villages to Arrow Rock, on the Missouri, probably because there they made flint heads for their arrows. This trail passed near the salt springs of Lamine creek and led to the Saline, along which was a noted warpath to the Osage villages, alternately traversed on their forays by the Saukees, Foxes and Osages. From the Osage villages a horse trail also led down and along White river to the Arkansas or Mississippi.202 Another Osage trace, three hun- dred miles long, from the so-called Arkansas-Osage villages on Ver- digris river led to St. Louis, was located probably by those Indians, to go to that post in order to trade with the Chouteaus. This trace ran northeast over the high lands and ridges to St. Michael - now Fredericktown - and thence by way of the Cook and Murphy settle- ments to St. Louis,203 following the dividing ridge between the Maramec and the St. Francois. From this trace another led from St. Michael southwest to a ford of the St. Francois, thence to Big Black, where the trace intersected with the big trail from Vincennes to Natchitoches, already mentioned.
Du Tisne, the earliest explorer by land through what is now Missouri, must have followed a trace or trail when he visited the Osages in 1720 in their villages on the Osage river. He started from Fort de Chartres, and crossing the river went to the mouth of the Saline, and it is certain that from there he followed the trail made by
197 Ibid., p. 41I.
198 Long's Expedition, vol. i., p. 413.
199 Autobiography of Black Hawk, in Pioneer Families of Missouri, p. 62.
200 Ibid., p. 75.
201 Pike's Expedition, vol. ii., p. 367.
202 Tour in the Ozarks in Missouri, and Arkansas, 1821, p. 52 (London Ed., I821).
203 Brown's Western Gazetter, p. 191.
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INDIANS PEACEABLE
the bisons coming from the Ozark hills to the salt springs of this creek. This path, instinctively made by these animals, thus opened a road into the interior of Missouri. Over this road much of the early commerce of the country from and to Kaskaskia passed. After the establishment of a post at Ste. Genevieve, trails also led from this post to the new settlements located successively on Big river, the headwaters of the St. Francois, Bellevue valley, and the lead districts of Mine la Motte and Mine à Breton; but all of these traces we can be assured followed, at least in part, aboriginal paths.
A trail or trace led down Castor river from St. Michael to the Indian villages in what is now Stoddard and Dunklin counties. These Indians traded at Ste. Genevieve, and the trail connected with the great Vincennes and Natchitoches path. In 1816 Shawnees and Delawares lived on Castor river and near Bloomfield, in what is now Stoddard county. They traveled this trail twice a year, in the spring and fall. In the spring they sold their furs and bear and winter deer skins, and in the fall their summer skins, honey and bear's oil, which they cased in deer hides tied together with rawhide tugs. They carried these products of their country on ponies and always traveled in single file. Mr. Norman,204 an old resident of Stoddard county, who has preserved these interesting facts for us, says that these Indians were dressed in deer skins, the men wearing leg- gins, a breech-cloth and hunting shirt, and a blanket in cold weather, in summer, a kind of red blouse trimmed with white and blue beads, a red handkerchief on the head and moccasins on the feet. The squaws were dressed very much the same way, except they wore silver jewels in their ears and noses. The trader residing among them was Louis Lorimier, junior (son of Don Louis Lorimier), who was graduated at West Point in 1806. Mr. Norman further says that these Indians were honest and friendly; that he never knew of their being charged with theft; that he never saw one of them intox- icated. They were peaceable and orderly, and the only instance Mr. Norman remembered of any these Indians attempting violence was an assault by one of them on the person of Nancy Taylor. For this he was arrested by the chief, stripped naked and made to sit on a hot rock in mid-summer for two consecutive days. In 1820, in Cape
204 Pen Sketches by W. W. Norman, published in Bloomfield "Vindicator," in about 1880.
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Girardeau county, Mrs. Jane Burns was murdered by a Shawnee Indian named Little George, one and one half miles from Jackson. At the time, this caused great excitement, and the chief of the village on Apple creek was notified that the criminal must be delivered over to the authorities. The Indian, who had fled to Arkansas, was cap- tured on Crowley's ridge, by a party of other Indians sent out by the chief, and his head cut off, brought back in a sack to Jackson and stuck on a pole near where the murder was committed, where it remained until it rotted down. The Indians claimed that this Indian had been hired to commit the crime by a white man named Boyce, which Mr. Norman thinks more than probable.
All Indians had peculiar ideas as to trade when they first came in contact with white people. It was by them considered perfectly proper to rue a bargain. Thus Long records that an Indian who had exchanged a rifle for a shotgun with Mr. Dougherty, the Indian agent, regretting his trade, came back to the camp to reverse the bar- gain, giving in addition a pair of moccasins. Next day he came to again reverse the trade.205 So also it was deemed by them perfectly proper to reclaim a present. On one occasion, Long says, an Indian, " a chief of the extinct Missouri nation," offered to trade a very valu- able horse for one less valuable, with a member of his expedition, and being asked to explain why he desired to make a trade so mani- festly disadvantageous, he said that the horse had been presented to him and that he feared the donor intended to reclaim him, but if he could make an exchange for another horse he would be secure from such a reclamation, as only the identical horse that had been pre- sented to him could be so reclaimed from him.206
In 1819, the Indians then dwelling in Missouri were personally distinguished by a perfectly upright carriage without the swinging gait of the white people. In walking they placed the foot on the ground perfectly parallel, because they said to turn the foot out- ward retarded progress in the high grass or narrow pathways. Their color, Volney says, was that of smoked ham. The line of the direc- tion of the eyes was nearly rectilinear by transverse; the nose promi- nent, either aquiline or Roman; lips more tumid than those of the Anglo-Saxon ; lower jaw large and robust; teeth strong, chin gener- ally well formed, cheek bones prominent, and the expression of the
205 Long's Expedition, vol. i., p. 185.
206 Ibid., p. 131.
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INDIAN TREATIES
countenance severe, austere, and often ferocious. Flint,207 who, when at St. Charles, first observed the Osage and other Indians of the west, remarks that the Indians he saw there, though perfectly resem- bling the Indians east of the Mississippi in form and countenance, on closer examination had an untamed savageness of countenance, a panther-like expression, utterly unlike the tame and subdued coun- tenance of the northern Indians, but the women had brighter faces than the men, and were of a more vivacious and cheerful disposition. The sense of hearing of the Indians was very acute, and memory very retentive. They had little mechanical ingenuity, but the women made beautiful moccasins, handsome necklaces of beads and decor- ated the buffalo robes with various designs. The daughters of the chiefs and wealthy Indians were often tattooed with a small round spot on the forehead. It was early observed that a peculiar odor was diffused by the body of the Indians, not so much by the cutane- ous transpiration as by the custom of rubbing themselves with odoriferous plants; and Long 208 observes that this odor is rather agreeable than otherwise. But to the acute sense of smell of the Indians the odor of the white man was far from pleasant.209
Almost immediately after the cession of Louisiana a treaty was entered into, November 3, 1804, between the United States and the Saukee and Fox Indian tribes, at Portage des Sioux, whereby these tribes ceded, among other lands, the territory now in Missouri, east of a line beginning at a point on the Missouri opposite the mouth of the Gasconade, thence in a course so as to strike the river Jeffron at a distance of thirty miles from its mouth, and down the said Jeffron to the Mississippi. The district so ceded now embraces the counties of Marion, Ralls, Pike, Lincoln, St. Charles, Warren, Montgomery and portions of Audrain and Monroe. This treaty was made, Black Hawk 210 claims, without any authority having been given the Indian chiefs who, in that transaction, pretended to represent the Saukee and Fox tribes. The commissioner on behalf of the United States was William H. Harrison, and Quash-qua-me, Pa-she-pa-ho, La- yow-vois, Out-che-qua-ha, and Ha-she-qua-rhi-qua ostensibly repre- sented the Saukees and Foxes. This treaty, as we shall see here- after, was the principal cause of much ill feeling among the Indians.
207 Flint's Recollections of the Mississippi Valley, in Indian chapter, p. 93. 208 Long's Expedition, vol. i., p. 285.
209 Ibid., p. 486.
210 Life of Black Hawk, in Pioneer Families of Missouri, p. 466.
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The first treaty with the Great and Little Osages was made in November, 1808, at Fort Osage. By this treaty the Osages agreed that the boundary between these tribes and the United States should begin at Fort Osage, on the Missouri river, five miles above Fire Prairie, and run thence due south to the Arkansas river, and thence down this river to the Mississippi. They ceded all the land east of this line and north from the Arkansas river to the Missouri river. These Indians, at the same time, relinquished all their claim to lands north of the Missouri, and also granted two square leagues west of the boundary line, to embrace Fort Osage, to be laid off in such manner as might be directed by the President of the United States. By this treaty the Osage title to the territory south of the Missouri river in the present state of Missouri was extinguished, with the exception, however, of the western tier of counties. But Governor Lewis, in 1808, did not understand that the treaty extinguished the Osage title to the country north of the Missouri. Governor Clark in his proclamation March 9, 1815, however, so construed it. Afterward, in 1815, at Portage des Sioux, he pacified all the Indians that could have had any pre- tensions to the country, and thus secured the country to the United States without any additional expense, a fact which his friends thought entitled him to a great deal of credit.
In 1815, at Portage des Sioux, the treaty of 1804 was confirmed and ratified by the Saukees residing on the Des Moines river, and the Fox tribe. But in that year only a few "of the most insignificant and contemptible of these tribes" offered to treat with the commission- ers - Clark, Williams, Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau. 211 This treaty was one of the results of the war of 1812, in which the Saukees and Foxes proved very troublesome on account of the unauthorized treaty of 1804, but in 1818 the Saukees on the Rock river and the adjacent country in a council held in St. Louis also assented to and ratified the treaty of 1804.
The Kickapoos, by a treaty they made with the United States at Edwardsville in 1819, ceded certain territory in Illinois and Indiana to the United States, and in return received a grant of land in the then Missouri territory, described as follows: Beginning at the con- fluence of the Pomme de Terre and Osage, thence up the Pomme de Terre to the dividing ridge that separated the waters of the Osage and White rivers, thence westerly to the Osage boundary line of 1818,
211 American State Papers, vol. ii., Indians, p. 8.
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INDIAN TITLES EXTINGUISHED
thence north to Nerve creek, thence down said creek to a point due south of White Clay or Richard creek, thence north to the Osage river, and thence down said river to the place of beginning. This land was granted to the Kickapoos and their heirs forever, provided only, that they should not sell the same without the consent of the President of the United States.212 In 1820 at St. Louis the title to this tract of land was confirmed, but in 1832 by a treaty made at Castor Hill, in St. Louis county, this territory, intended originally as a permanent home of the Kickapoos, was again exchanged for lands west of the Missouri state line.
At Washington in 1823 the Saukee and Fox tribes also ceded and quit-claimed all their rights within the limits of the state north of the Missouri river, and between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to a line on the west running from the mouth of the Kansas river north one hundred miles to the northwest corner of the state of Missouri, as the limits of the state were defined and fixed when admitted into the Union. The Iowas in 1824 gave up all claims to the same ter- ritory, a part of which, at least, had been their immemorial hunting ground. Under this treaty, they agreed neither to settle nor hunt in this territory.
By a treaty made at St. Louis in 1825 the Great and Little Osages gave up all their rights to the remaining land in Missouri, not em- braced in the treaty of 1808, being a strip of land on the west border of the state and now within the limits of the counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, Vernon, Barton, Jasper, Newton. and McDonald. At the same time, the Kansas also ceded all their lands in Missouri, located near the mouth of the Kansas river and principally embraced within the present limits of Jackson and Cass counties.
The Shawnees and Delawares who came to upper Louisiana prior to 1793, and those who settled afterwards by invitation of the Spanish government, received a grant of land from Baron de Carondelet, Gov- ernor-general, situated between St. Cosme creek and Cape Girardeau, bounded on the east by the Mississippi and west by White Water. The Osages had ceded all this territory in 1808, but the 6th Article of the Treaty of Cession of 1803 expressly stipulated that the United States should "execute such treaties and articles as may have been agreed between Spain and the tribes and nations of Indians until by mutual consent of the United States and the said tribes and nations
212 To this treaty the Osages objected.
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other suitable articles shall have been agreed upon;" and hence, the title and right of these Shawnees and Delawares to this district granted them by Carondelet was fully protected. In 1815 some of the Delawares and Shawnees, as we have seen, removed farther west on assurance that they should receive other tracts of land for the territory they owned. Some of these Indians removed to the borders of Castor and St. Francois rivers, west of White Water, and estab- lished villages in that territory. Some of the Delawares in 1815 set- tled on James' Fork of White river, in southwest Missouri, and located a village about fifteen miles south of the present site of Springfield, claiming the country now within the limits of Christian, Stone, and Barry counties under this agreement. The Shawnees claimed the land east of the territory occupied by the Delawares. In 1828 the Piankeshaws and Peorias had villages and hunted on these lands of the Delawares and Shawnees. The Shawnee claim in that territory embraced most of the counties of Taney, Ozark, Douglas, Webster, and Wright. In 1825 by a treaty made in St. Louis with the Shawnees, in consideration of the cession of the lands granted them by the Spanish authorities, a tract equal to fifty square miles west of the Missouri state line was granted these Indians, and they eventually took up their residence in what is now the Indian Terri- tory. In 1829 the Delawares, at a council held at James' Fork of White river, relinquished their title to their Cape Girardeau grant, and also to their lands on James' Fork, and removed to the Dela- ware reservation, in the fork of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. Finally, in 1832, the allied Delawares and Shawnees of Cape Girar- deau by a treaty made at Castor Hill, in St. Louis county, again relinquished their lands and improvements in that locality, and the last remnant of these tribes removed from that district shortly after- ward.
The title to the territory known as the Platte Purchase was ceded in 1830 by the treaty of Prairie du Chien by the Saukee and Fox and other Indian tribes to the United States.
Thus, within thirty years after the acquisition of Louisiana Ter- ritory, the title of the aborigines to the last foot of land held by them and their ancestors, from time immemorial, within the limits of Missouri, amounting in the aggregate to 39,119,018.89 acres, was extinguished.
CHAPTER VIII
Possibilities of the Mississippi Valley not Appreciated-First Settlers Canadians -Joutel's Notice of Salt Springs on the Saline in 1687-La Hontan on the Missouri in 1688-Hunts with the Arkansas on the West Bank of the Mississippi Below the Mouth of the Missouri-French Traders Visit the Missouris and Osages, 1694-Fathers Montigny, Davion and St. Cosme, in 1798, on Missouri Soil-St. Cosme Erects a Cross on the Right Bank of the Mississippi in 1699 Near Cape St. Antoine, Probably Within the Present Perry County-First White Settlement in the Mississippi Valley Near the Mouth of the Des Peres River-French-Canadians on the Missouri in 1705-Rumors of Mines of Precious Metals-Father Gravier Mentions a Rich Lead Mine in 1700 on the "Miaramigoua" (Maramec)-Cape St. Croix Identified-Wild Game There-Natural Crossing of the Missis- sippi-Le Sueur's Voyage Up the Mississippi in 1700-Distress of Party- Relieved by the Jesuit Missionaries-Penicaut Notes a French Settlement at the Mouth of the Saline-Le Sueur Arrives at Cahokia-Goes Farther Up the River-Camps at the Mouth of Buffalo-Father Marest Notes the Salt Springs on the Saline, 1712-Bienville Sends an Expedition Up the River to Explore the Missouri, 1708-The Spanish Expedition and Its Fate- Various Accounts by Bossu, Charlevoix, and Others Discussed-Du Tisne's Journey into the Interior of Missouri in 1718-Goes Up the Saline and Across the Country-Visits the Osages and Other Indians-Erects the Arms of France at the Headwaters of the Osage-Stories of Du Tisne Given by Bossu-Bourgmont's Expedition-Biography of Bourgmont- Dumont's Satirical Story-Copy of Bourgmont's Original Commission- Established Fort Orleans Near the Mouth of Grand River in 1720-Story of Bourgmont's March into the Indian Country from Fort Orleans- Bourgmont Returns to France-Fort Orleans Abandoned.
A century and a half elapsed from the time De Soto first beheld the Mississippi until La Salle finally traced its waters to the Gulf. The magnitude of the valley it drained was then but dimly known. Vaguely, it was supposed to be a vast country. Nor were the immense possibilities of these new possessions of France generally appreciated. It was hoped that mines of gold and silver would be found. Thus, a search for precious metals began. Attracted by the climate and wonderful fertility of the soil, the game of the country, and the facili- ties to secure furs, a number of Canadians early formed settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia. For a time these two villages were the sole centers of civilization in the Mississippi valley. From these vantage points the hunters and traders living there and other tran- sient visitors from Canada began to make voyages in the territory of the present state of Missouri, following the waters of the Missouri, the Osage, and many other streams. How interesting it would be
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for us now to have detailed accounts of what these adventurers saw and experienced when first they traversed the virgin realms of the state! But they, their very names, their deeds and their adventures and all they saw and experienced, have perished as if they had not been.1 Yet, some interesting incidents and stories have come down to us, and these we propose to relate in this chapter chronologically, as near as may be, although disconnected.
One little authentic glimpse we get from Joutel's "Journal," noted down as he hurried home in 1687 with the bloody story of the tragic death of La Salle concealed in his bosom. Speaking of the salt springs of Saline creek, in what is now Ste. Genevieve county, he says: "We held our way till the 25th (August, 1687), when the Indians showed us a spring of salt water within a musket-shot of us, and made us go ashore to view it. We observed the ground about it was much beaten by bullocks' feet, and it is likely that they love that salt water." Then he gives us this charming glimpse of the landscape: "The country was full of hillocks, covered with oak and walnut-trees, abundance of plum-trees, almost all the plums red and pretty good; besides, great stores of other sorts of fruits whose names we know not, and among them one 2 shaped like a middling pear, with stones in it as large as a bean. When ripe, it peels like a ripe peach, taste is of indifferent good, but rather of the sweetest." And on his voyage farther up the river, Joutel 3 describes the per- pendicular cliffs above Ste. Genevieve, saying: "We proceeded on our journey the 28th and 29th (of August, 1687), coasting along the foot of an upright rock about sixty or eighty feet high, around which the river glides."
The history of the voyages of La Hontan is generally considered entitled to little credence. Many of the statements with which he interlarded his narrative are undoubtedly pure fiction. Yet, it would be a mistake to reject his entire narrative, because certainly he saw
1 Joutel records that among the Cenis he met two Frenchmen, who had deserted La Salle when he first went down the Mississippi river, and that in a short time they had become mere savages; that they were naked and that they bedaubed "their faces like the rest," and that the libertine life they led was pleasing to them. One of them was named Ruter, from Brittany, and the other Grollet, of Rochelle .- French's Historical Collection of Louisiana, part i., p. 154. His son, named Routel-Attikaloube-Mingo, came to Fort de Chartres in 1756 as a messenger of the Arkansas, bearing the calumet .- Bossu's Nouveaux Voy- ages, p. 273.
2 The paw-paw.
3 French's Historical Collection of Louisiana, part i., pp. 181, 182.
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JOUTEL -LA HONTAN
much of the country and visited many of the Indian tribes then dwell- ing in the upper Mississippi valley. That he was on the Missouri river is evidenced by the fact that he mentions the various tribes that had their homes along this river when Bourgmont and other French explorers afterward visited this region. He says that in March, 1688, with some soldiers and Outagamie (Fox) Indians, he paddled down the Mississippi in canoes from the mouth of the Des Moines to the mouth of the Missouri; that then he went up the Missouri river, which he notes has a very rapid current, to a village of the Missouris, situ- ated about a day's journey from the mouth of the river, and from this village, after another day's journey, still going up the river, he came to another village of the Missouris, and, on the third day, claims that he camped at the mouth of the Osage, where he built some huts. Here he and his party were threatened by an attack of some Indians, but the accidental discharge of a musket in the hands of one of the soldiers so terrified the Indians, who had never heard the discharge of firearms, that they precipitately fled, and that then the Outagamies who accompanied La Hontan, becoming thoroughly alarmed, insisted upon his return. So La Hontan returned, stopping on his way at one of the villages of the Missouris and there discharging his firearms, he frightened the women and children and "superannuated" men (the warriors being out on their hunt) that they all rushed out of their cabins, "calling out for mercy," all because they, too, had never heard the report of a musket. La Hontan says "that the whole crew turned out, and we set fire to the village on all sides," which pro- ceeding he excuses by stating that the Indians who threatened to attack them on the day prior belonged to this village. After per- forming this heroic work, La Hontan and his escort rapidly moved down to the mouth of the Missouri and thence proceeded southward down the Mississippi. He 4 observes in his narrative that the right (west) bank of the river then "swarmed" with buffalo. After going some distance down the river, he saw a big band of Arkansas savages hunting, who "made a sign that we should make toward them." With some hesitation La Hontan concluded to do so, and to stop and hunt with them. He remained two days. These Arkansas Indians, La Hontan5 says, claimed that the Missouris and Osages "were
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