70 NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. 



joined by some of tlieir company whom llicy had left at 

 Mackinac. Here they buiU a fort. They then passed up 

 the river as far as the point where a narrow portage of about 

 a league divides it from the Kankake or southern branch of 

 the Illinois River, where they crossed to the stream last 

 named. Tliis branch of the Illinois was called by the 

 Indians Theakeke, wolf, because the tribe of Indians called 

 by that name, commonly known as the Mahingans, dwelt 

 there. The mode of speaking it by the French was Kiakiki, 

 and became corrupted to Kankake. From the point of land- 

 ing on the Miami River the portage extended over a wet 

 champaign to the neighborhood of the source of the Thea- 

 keke, on which, at a village inhabited by Miamis, Mascotins, 

 and Ouiatinons, the hardy and intrepid voyagers launched 

 their bark canoes to descend by the Illinois and Missisippi 

 Rivers, only heard of, but unknown before, through vast re- 

 gions of unrevealed and doubtful country, whose forest and 

 prairie might then, so far as known to them, receive for tlie 

 first time the foot of man, or might resound with the yell of 

 the lurking and blood-loving Indian. The Theakeke springs 

 out of lands which are so miry that a person can scarcely 

 w^alk over them. And the country, for a gi"eat extent, upon 

 the river, is of the same description. " That country," says 

 the relation, " is nothing but marshes, full of alder trees and 

 rushes, and we could have hardly found, for forty leagues to- 

 gether, any place to plant our cabins, had it not l^cen for the 

 frost, which made the earth more firm and solid." Tlie com- 

 pany had taken their departure from the Fort at tlie moutli of 

 the 8t. Joseph's, or River of the Miamis, on Lake Michigan, 

 on the 3d day of Dec, 1679, and it was near the close of the 

 same month when they arrived at tlic village of the Illinois, 

 on the river of that name, a distance of more tlian one 

 huncked leagues from the Fort. In this journey, after pass- 



