644 PROCEEDINOl? OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. tol. 46. 



spring, which is for the general use of the French subjects, and several 

 persons belonging to this village have works here, and make great 

 quantities of salt for the supply of the Indians, hunters, and the other 

 settlements." ^ 



Some yeai-s later "A grant of a tract of land, one league square, 

 was here made by the Spanish government, in favor of a Frenchman 

 named Pegreau, the founder of the deserted town called New Bourbon. 

 The tract included a valuable brine spring near the mouth of the 

 [Saline] creek. The proprietor, built a house near the bank of the 

 Mississippi, where he resided for some time, and carried on a manu- 

 facture of salt."^ Soon after the transfer of Louisiana to the United 

 States the tract was acquired by others. Salt is said to have been 

 made here in large quantities as late as 1835, and even at this late 

 day several of the old iron kettles are to be found near the spring, and 

 many fragments lie scattered about on the surface. 



THE SALT SPRING. 



As has been shown in the preceding section, the area immediately 

 surrounding the salt spring was occupied by the French colonists soon 

 after the establishment of the European settlement at Kaskaskia, 

 and the whites continued making salt at the spring until about the 

 year 1835. As a result of these activities, covering a period of more 

 than a century, a vast quantity of wood ashes and charred wood 

 accumulated here, covering the traces of an earlier occupancy of the 

 site by the Indians. A sketch of this area is reproduced in figure 2, 

 being a more detailed plan of A on the map (fig. 1). The mass of 

 ashes attains its greatest thickness just north of the spring, and at 

 B, figure 2, an excavation was made wliich reached the undisturbed 

 clay at a depth of about 6 feet. This was near the edge of the ash 

 bank, which, a few feet west, was considerably higher than at this 

 point. 



Between the mass of ashes and the small branch, the stippled area 

 on the plan, the ground is so impregnated with salt that it is barren 

 of vegetation. The ground is saturated, and an excavation made at 

 any point over the surface of this area wiU soon be filled with salt 

 water. It is said that during the time the salt water was utilized 

 by the whites, a large excavation made around the spring served as a 

 reservoir in which the water, later to be evaporated by the salt 

 makers, was collected. 



Scattered over the surface of this area are many fragments of large 

 pottery vessels of Indian make, and a great quantity of sandstone. 

 The pieces of sandstone range from 1 inch to a foot or more in diam- 

 eter, and practically all have been turned red by the action of fire. 



1 Pittman, Capt. Philip, The present state of the European Settlements on the Mississippi, London, 

 1770, p. 50. 



2 James, Edwin, Account of an Expedition, under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long, Philadel- 

 phia, 1823, vol. 1, p. 48. 



