A Botanical and Economic Study, i ^5 



inde probe confracta et aequata feminae fabas et milium sive. 

 Mayzum serunt, prneeuntibus nonnullis, quae defixo in terrain 

 baculo foramina faciunt, in quae fabae et milii grana inji 

 antur." 



A Jesuit missionary named Marquette, with a trader named 

 Joliet, and five other Frenchmen, started out to reach a great 

 river in the far west, of which much had been heard. The 

 explorers reached the Mississippi, and sailed to the mouth of 

 the Arkansas. Marquette says: "The first was a dish of 

 sagamite, that is, some Indian meal boiled in water."' La 

 Salle, another Frenchman, built a canoe on Lake Erie and 

 paddled through the Lakes, in 1679, as f ar as Green Bay. From 

 there, by Lake Michigan, they went to the mouth of the St 

 Joseph, crossed the Illinois and made their way back by Lake 

 Ontario. Father Hennepin and another priest, during La 

 Salle's absence, went down the Illinois to the Mississippi, 

 and up this river to the Falls of St. Anthony. La Salle and 

 Hennepin met on the Illinois, for Hennepin, in his narrative, 

 states: "We continued our course (up) this river very near 

 the whole of December, toward the end of which we arrived at 

 the village of the Illinois, about one hundred and thirty leagues 

 from Fort Miami. We found nobody in the village, yet we 

 durst not meddle with the corn they had laid under ground 

 for their subsistence, and to sow their land with, it being the 

 most sensible wrong one can do them, in their opinion, to take 

 some of their corn in their absence. However, our necessity 

 being very great, and it being impossible to continue our 

 voyage, M. La Salle took about forty bushels of it hoping 

 to appease them with some presents. We embarked again 

 with this fresh provision, and fell down the river the first of 

 January, 1680. We took the elevation of the pole, which 

 was 33 45'."* Hennepin evidently accompanied La Salle in 

 1682 to the lower Mississippi. In his narrative he says : 

 " I was surprised to see their Indian corn, which was left very 

 green, grown already to maturity, but I have learned since 

 that their corn is ripe sixty days after it is sown." M. Le Page 



: Contributions to North American Ethnology, v, 53 

 2 Hennepin's Account, Reprint Trans. Antiq. Soc, 1, 73. 



