INTRODUCTION 



The present work covers, in part, new ground geographical- 

 ly : — and differs in design, plan, and mode of treatment, 

 from those that have before appeared descriptive of some 

 portions of the district of which it treats. 



Though for more than a century and a half known to the 

 French Missionaries, the voyageurs, and the coureurs des 

 bois, and to those few who went out as discoverers and ex- 

 plorers, yet it was almost wholly an unknown region to our 

 American geographers only twenty years since. Mr. Darby, 

 in his Gazetteer date 1827, says that much of the portion 

 west of the Missisippi is unknown. 



Most of the books that have been pubhshed in relation to 

 this country, have been designed only for guides to travellers 

 and emigrants ; — and have consequently been subject, so far 

 as the general reader has been concerned, to the twofold 

 objection that they were too much in detail to be of interest 

 to them, or to embody that kind of information, in that 

 shape, that would be valuable ;— and also that by the rapid 

 transitions constantly in progress in this part of the country, 

 they very soon became antiquated and not to be confided in 



