Scenes and Adventures in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Scenes and Adventures in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas - Henry Rowe Schoolcraft страница 2

СКАЧАТЬ isolated primitive tract on the sources of the St. Francis and Grand rivers—the "Coligoa" of the Spanish adventurer—and he felt a strong impulse to explore the regions west of it, to determine the extent of this formation, and fix its geological relations between the primitive ranges of the Alleghany and Rocky mountains.

      Reports represented it as an alpine tract, abounding in picturesque valleys and caves, and replete with varied mineral resources, but difficult to penetrate on account of the hostile character of the Osage and Pawnee Indians. He recrossed the Mississippi to the American bottom of Illinois, to lay his plan before a friend and fellow-traveller in an earlier part of his explorations, Mr. Ebenezer Brigham, of Massachusetts, who agreed to unite in the enterprise. He then proceeded to St. Louis, where Mr. Pettibone, a Connecticut man, and a fellow-voyager on the Alleghany river, determined also to unite in this interior journey. The place of rendezvous was appointed at Potosi, about forty miles west of the Mississippi. Each one was to share in the preparations, and some experienced hunters and frontiersmen were to join in the expedition. But it turned out, when the day of starting arrived, that each one of the latter persons found some easy and good excuse for declining to go, principally on the ground that they were poor men, and could not leave supplies for their families during so long a period of absence. Both the other gentlemen came promptly to the point, though one of them was compelled by sickness to return; and my remaining companion and myself plunged into the wilderness with a gust of adventure and determination, which made amends for whatever else we lacked.

      It is only necessary to add, that the following journal narrates the incidents of the tour. The narrative is drawn up from the original manuscript journal in my possession. Outlines of parts of it, were inserted in the pages of the Belles-lettres Repository, by Mr. Van Winkle, soon after my return to New York, in 1819; from whence they were transferred by Sir Richard Phillips to his collection of Voyages and Travels, London, 1821. This latter work has never been republished in the United States.

      In preparing the present volume, after so considerable a lapse of time, it has been thought proper to omit all such topics as are not deemed of permanent or historical value. The scientific facts embraced in the appendix, on the mines and mineralogy of Missouri, are taken from my publication on these subjects. In making selections and revisions from a work which was at first hastily prepared, I have availed myself of the advantage of subsequent observation on the spot, as well as of the suggestions and critical remarks made by men of judgment and science.

      A single further remark may be made: The term Ozark is applied to a broad, elevated district of highlands, running from north to south, centrally, through the States of Missouri and Arkansas. It has on its east the striking and deep alluvial tract of the Mississippi river, and, on its west, the woodless buffalo plains or deserts which stretch below the Rocky Mountains. The Osage Indians, who probably furnish origin for the term, have occupied all its most remarkable gorges and eminences, north of the Arkansas, from the earliest historical times; and this tribe, with the Pawnees ("Apana"), are supposed to have held this position ever since the days of De Soto.

      Washington, January 20, 1853.

      INTRODUCTION.

       Table of Contents

      De Soto's death frustrated his plan of founding a colony of Spain in the Mississippi valley; and that stream was allowed to roll its vast volume into the gulf a hundred and thirty-two years longer, before it attracted practical notice. Precisely at the end of this time, namely, in 1673, Mons. Jolliet, accompanied by James Marquette, the celebrated enterprising missionary of New France, entered the stream at the confluence of the Wisconsin, in accordance with the policy, and a plan of exploration, of the able, brave, and efficient governor-general of Canada, the Count Frontenac. Marquette and his companion, who was the chief of the expedition, but whose name has become secondary to his own, descended it to the mouth of the Arkansas, the identical spot of De Soto's demise. La Salle, some five or six years later, continued the discovery to the gulf; and Hennepin extended it upward, from the point where Marquette had entered it, to the falls of St. Anthony, and the river St. Francis. And it is from this era of La Salle, the narrators of whose enlarged plans, civic and ecclesiastical, recognised the Indian geographical terminology, that it has retained its Algonquin name of Mississippi.

      It is by no means intended to follow these initial facts by recitals of the progress of the subsequent local discoveries in the Mississippi valley, which were made respectively under French, British, and American rule. Sufficient is it, for the present purpose, to say, that the thread of the discovery of the Mississippi, north and west of the points named, was not taken up effectively, till the acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson determined to explore the newly acquired territories, and directed the several expeditions of discovery under Lewis and Clark, and Lieut. Z. M. Pike. The former traced out the Missouri to its sources, and followed the Columbia to the Pacific; while the latter continued the discovery of the Mississippi river above St. Anthony's falls where Hennepin, and perhaps Carver, had respectively left it. The map which Pike published in 1810 contained, however, an error of a capital geographical point, in regard to the actual source of the Mississippi. He placed it in Turtle lake, at the source of Turtle river of upper Lac Cedre Rouge, or Cass lake, which lies in the portage to Red lake of the great Red River of the North, being in the ordinary route of the fur trade to that region.

      So far as the fact of De Soto's exploration of the country west of the Mississippi, in the present area of Missouri and Arkansas, is concerned, it is apprehended that the author of these incidents of travel has been the first person to identify and explore this hitherto confused part of the celebrated Spanish explorer's route. This has been traced from the narrative, with the aid of the Indian lexicography, in the third volume of his Indian History (p. 50), just published, accompanied by a map of the entire route, from his first landing on the western head of Tampa bay. Prior to the recital of these personal incidents, it may serve a useful СКАЧАТЬ