on them the name of Renouard, from which we derive their longstanding popular name. Their traditions attribute their origin to eastern portions of America. Mr. Gates, who acted as my interpreter, and is well acquainted with their language and customs, informs me that their traditions refer to their residence on the north banks of the St. Lawrence, near the ancient Cataraqui. They appear to have been a very erratic, spirited, warlike, and treacherous tribe; dwelling but a short time at a spot, and pushing westward, as their affairs led them, till they finally reached the Mississippi, which they must have crossed after 1766, for Carver found them living in villages on the Wisconsin. At Saginaw, they appear to have formed a fast alliance with the Saucs, a tribe to whom they are closely allied by language and history. They figure in the history of Indian events about old Michilimackinac, where they played pranks under the not very definite title of Muscodainsug, but are first conspicuously noted while they dwelt on the river bearing their name, which falls into Green Bay, Wisconsin.* The Chippewas, with whom they have strong affinity of language, call them Otagami, and ever deemed them a sanguinary and unreliable tribe. The French defeated them in a sanguinary battle at Butte de Mort, and by this defeat drove them from Fox River.

Their present numbers cannot be accurately given. I was informed that the village I visited contained two hundred and fifty souls. They have a large village at Rock Island, where the Foxes and Saucs live together, which consists of sixty lodges, and numbers three hundred souls. One-half of these may be Saucs. They have another village at the mouth of Turkey River; altogether, they may muster from 460 to 500 souls. Yet, they are at war with most of the tribes around them, except the Iowas, Saucs, and Kickapoos. They are engaged in a deadly, and apparently successful war against the Sioux tribes. They recently killed nine men of that nation, on the Terre Blue River; and a party of twenty men are now absent, in the same direction, under a half-breed named Morgan. They are on bad terms with the Osages and Pawnees of the Missouri, and not on the best terms with their neighbors the Winnebagoes.

* This name was first applied to a territory in 1836.

I again embarked at four o'clock A. M. (8th). My men were stout fellows, and worked with hearty will, and it was thought possible to reach the Prairie during the day, by hard and late pushing. We passed Turkey River at two o'clock, and they boldly plied their paddles, sometimes animating their labors with a song; but the Mississippi proved too stout for us; and some time after nightfall we put ashore on an island, before reaching the Wisconsin. In ascending the river this day, observed the pelican, which exhibited itself in a flock, standing on a low sandy spot of an island. This bird has a clumsy and unwieldy look, from the duplicate membrane attached to its lower mandible, which is constructed so as when inflated to give it a bag like appearance. A short sleep served to restore the men, and we were again in our canoes the next morning (9th) before I could certainly tell the time by my watch. Daylight had not yet broke when we passed the influx of the Wisconsin, and we reached the Prairie under a full chorus, and landed at six o'clock.

12

CHAPTER XVI.

The expedition proceeds from Prairie du Chein up the Wisconsin Valley-Incidents of the ascent-Etymology of the name-The low state of its waters favorable to the observation of its fresh-water conchology-Cross the Wisconsin summit, and descend the Fox River to Winnebago Lake.

WE were now at the foot of the Wisconsin Valley-at the point, in fact, where Marquette and Joliet, coming from the forests and lakes of New France, had discovered the great River of the West, in 1673. Marquette, led by his rubrics, named it the River "Conception," but, in his journal, he freely employs the aboriginal term of Mississippi, which was in use by the whole body of the Algonquin tribes. While awaiting, at Prairie du Chein, the preparations for ascending the Wisconsin, the locality was found a very remarkable one for its large unios, and some other species of fresh-water shells. Some specimens of the unio crassus, found on the shores of the island in the Mississippi, opposite the village, were of thrice the size of any noticed in America or Europe, and put conchologists in doubt whether the species should not be named giganteus.* I had, in coming down the Mississippi, procured some fine and large specimens of the unio purpureus of Mr. Say, at the Painted Rock, with some other species; and the discovery of such large species of the crassus served to direct new attention to the subject.

Our sympathies were excited, at this place, by observing an object of human deformity in the person of an Indian, who, to remedy the want of the power of locomotion, had adjusted his legs in a large wooden bowl. By rocking this on the ground, he supplied, in a manner, the lost locomotive power. This man of the bowl possessed his faculties of mind unimpaired, spoke seve

* American Journal of Science, vol. vi. p. 119.

ral Indian languages, besides the Canadian French, and appeared cheerful and intelligent. An excursion into the adjacent country, to view some caves, and a reported mineral locality made by Mr. Trowbridge, during my descent to the mines of Dubuque, brought me some concretions of carbonate of lime, but the Indian guides either faltered to make the promised discoveries, through their superstitions, or really failed in the effort to find the object. By tracing the shores of the Mississippi, I found the rolled and hard agates and other quartz species, which characterize the pebble-drift of its sources, still present in the down-flowing shoredrift.

The aboriginal name of this place is Kipesági, an Algonquin word, which is applied to the mouth or outflow of the Wisconsin River. It appears to be based on the verb kipa, to be thick or turbid, and sauge, outflow-the river at its floods, being but little else than a moving mass of sand and water.

It was the 9th (Aug.) at half-past ten in the morning before the expedition left the Prairie to ascend the Wisconsin, the mouth of which we reached after descending the Mississippi three miles. This is an impressive scene-the bold cliffs of the west bank of the Mississippi, with Pike's-hill rising in front on the west, while those of the Wisconsin Valley stand at but little less elevation on the north and south. At this season of the year the water is clear and placid, and mingles itself in its mighty recipient without disturbance. But it is easy to conceive, what the Indians affirm, that in its floods it is a strong and turbid mass of moving waters, against which nothing can stand. This character of the stream is believed, indeed, to be the origin of the Indian name of Wisconsin. Miskawägumi, means a strong or mixed water, or liquid. By adding to this word totoshabo (milk), the meaning is coagulated or turning milk; it is often used to mean brandy, which is then called strong water; by adding iscodawabo, the meaning is fire-water. Marquette, in 1673, spells the name of the river indifferently Meshkousing, and Mishkousing. Of this term, the inflection ing, is simply a local form, the letter s being thrown in for euphony. This word appears to be a derivation from the term mushkowa, strong water. By admitting the transmutation of m to w, the initial syllable mis is changed to wis, and the interpretation is then river (or place) of strong waters. The term of kipesagi, applied

to its mouth, is but another characteristic feature of it-the one laying stress on its turbidity in flood, and the other on its strength of current. These are certainly the two leading traits of the Wisconsin, which rushes with a great average velocity over an inclined plane, without falls, for a great distance. It originates in a remarkable summit of sandy plains, which send out to the west the Chippewa River of Lake Pepin, to the north the Montreal and Ontonagon of Lake Superior, and to the east the Menomonee of Green Bay, while the Wisconsin becomes its southern offdrain, till it finally turns west at the Portage, and flows into the Mississippi.

We ascended, the first day, eighteen miles; the next, thirtysix; the third day, thirty-four miles; the fourth, forty; the fifth, thirty-eight, and the sixth, sixteen, which brought us to the Fox and Wisconsin Portage, a spot renowned from the earliest French days of western discovery. For here, on the waters separating the Mississippi from the great lakes, there had, at successive intervals, been pitched the tents of Marquette, La Hontan, Carver, and other explorers, who have, in their published journals, left traces of their footsteps. La Salle, who excelled them all in energy of character, proceeded to the Mississippi from Lake Michigan, down the Illinois.

Our estimates made the distance from the Mississippi to this point one hundred and eighty-two miles. It is a wide, and (at this season) shallow stream, with transparent waters, running over a bed of yellow sand, checkered with numerous small islands, and long spits of sandbars. There is not a fall in this distance, and it must be navigable with large craft during the periodical freshets. It receives the Blue, Pine, and other tributaries in this distance. Its valley presents a geological section, on a large scale, of the series of lead-bearing rocks extending in regular succession from the fundamental sandstone to the topmost limestones. The water being shallow and warm, we often waded from bar to bar, and found the scene a fruitful one for its freshwater conchology. The Indians frequently amused me by accounts of the lead mines and mineral productions of its borders; but I followed them in this search only to be convinced that they were without sincerity in these representations, and had no higher objects on this head, than, by assuming a conciliatory man