WHEN the triumphant English colonies had succeeded in 

 throwing off the ruling hand of the mother country, 

 it was necessary that some sort of an agreement 

 should be reached as to the boundary between the new-born 

 republic and Great Britain. Negotiations for peace were un- 

 der way early in the summer of 1781 but nothing definitely 

 was accomplished until the fall of the following year when 

 John Jay, the United States commissioner, handed to Richard 

 Oswald, the English representative, the American articles. 

 After several changes and additions the first of these articles 

 on the dividing line between the United States and Canada 

 read thus: "Through the Lake Superior and northward 

 of the Isle Royal and Philepeaux, to the Long Lake (the name 

 then given to the bay of Pigeon river), thence through the 

 middle of Long Lake, and the water communication between it 

 and Lake of the Woods, thence through the said lake to the 

 most northwestern point thereof, and from thence on a due 

 west course to the river Mississippi; thence by a line to be 

 drawn along the middle of the said Mississippi until it shall 

 intercept the northernmost part of the 31st degree of north 

 latitude." 



Lake of the Woods lies about one hundred miles north of 

 the true source (Lake Itasca) of the Mississippi river and is 

 one of the great headwaters of the Nelson river flowing into 

 Hudson Bay. This beautiful body of water has played an im- 

 portant part in the destiny of the United States. Such men 

 as John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay and 

 others of their times wrote of and discussed it as an impor- 

 tant point in international treaties. These great men wrote 

 of the lake without an idea of its size or geographical loca- 

 tion. No maps had ever been made except by some chance 

 explorers and even these showed the waters flowing eastward 

 into Lake Superior and the great St. Lawrence system. 



This erroneous belief lead the commissioners to think that 



22 . 



