LAHONTAN. 315 



the Fort and started for Micliilimackinac, by the south shore. The 

 Miamis return home overland. At j^Michilimackinac Lahontan finds 

 M. de la Durantaye, commander of the Coureurs de bois in the far 

 west and south, who has lately come up from Quebec. He has 

 brought to Lahontan funds wherewith to pay his men, and orders to 

 return to Quebec, with his soldiers, at once, if the season should per- 

 mit; if not, in the following spring. The French and natives give it 

 as their opinion that it would be unsafe to set out now. It was this 

 detention that led to the famous expedition to the Mississippi and 

 up the Riviere Longue. "I am on the point of undertaking another 

 journey," he says at the close of his fifteenth letter, "for I cannot 

 mew myself up here all this winter. I design to make the best use 

 of my time, and to travel through the southern countries of which I 

 have heard so much, and I have engaged four or five good huntsmen 

 of the Ottawas to go along with me." The sixteenth letter is taken 

 up with an account of this expedition. He leaves Mackinaw on the 

 29th of September with his detachment and five Ottawa huntsmen. 

 "All the soldiers," he says, "were provided with new canoes loaded 

 with provisions and ammunition, and such commodities as are proper 

 for the savages." On the 9th of the following month he is at Fort 

 Outagamis, and his party is increased by the addition of ten Outa- 

 gariis warriors who understood the language of the Eokoros up the 

 Kiviere Longue. On the 19th he has reached the river Wisconsin, 

 after performing the usual portage, and in four days more he is on 

 the Mississippi. On the 3rd of November he enters the Long River. 

 On the 8th they have reached the country of the Eokoi-os. On the 

 12th they proceed on, accompanied by an escort of five or six hun- 

 dred Eokoros. On the 21st he is among people "who are very civH 

 and so far from a wild savage temper that they have an air of 

 humanity and kindness." Their huts were long and rounded at the 

 toj), made of reeds and bulrushes and cemented with a sort of fat 

 earth. The men and women go naked. The chief of the village 

 here presented him with six slaves of the Essanapes, a tribe hostile to 

 his, inhabiting about 60 leagues up the river. On the 27th they 

 reach a village of the Essanapes, On the 3rd of Dec. they arrive at 

 the principal village of the Essanapes. The head chief here furnishes 

 him with a convoy of two or three hundred men, to accompany him 

 to the country of the Gnacsitares who were allies of the Eokoros, 

 against especially the Mozeemleks, "a nation who never took the 



