THE SPANISH EXPEDITION TO MISSOURL IN 1719. 725 
mandant General at Louisiana, to deliver orders to the former. Consequently 
they gave the signal ordered and our other two canoes having crossed the river. 
the savages gave to our commandant the letters of M. de Bienville, in which he 
informed him that the Spaniards had sent out a detachment from New Mexico 
to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in fhat country. In the same packet 
there was a map drawn by a Spanish geographer, of the route which the caravan 
have held from Santa Fe, and there we noticed a large lake which they had crossed 
and to which they gave the name of Red Sea.’ I have scarcely a doubt 
that this is the lake which M. de Lisle { calls in his map the Sea of the West. 
The success of this expedition was very calamitous to the Spaniards. Their cara- 
van was composed of fifteen hundred people, men, women and soldiers, having 
with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and bringing with them a great number of 
horses and cattle, according to the custom of this nation to forget nothing that 
might be necessary for a settlement. Their design was to destroy the Missouris, 
and to seize upon their country, and with this intention they had resolved to go 
first to the Osages, a neighboring nation, enemies of the Missouris, to form an 
alliance with them and to engage them in theit behalf for the execution of their 
plan. But, perhaps the map which guided them was not correct, or they had 
not exactly followed it; it chanced that instead of going to the Osages whom 
they sought, they fell, without knowing it, in a village of the Missouris, where 
the Spanish commander, presenting himself to the great chief to offer him 
the calumet, made him understand through his interpreter, believing he was 
speaking to the Osage chief, that they were enemies of the Missouris, that they 
come to destroy them, to make their women and children slaves and to take pos- 
session of their country; consequently he begged that they would be willing to 
form an alliance with them, against a nation whom they regarded as their enemy, 
and to second them in this enterprise, promising to recompense them liberally 
for the service rendered, and to be always their friend in the future. Upon this 
discourse the Missouri chief understood perfectly the mistakes. He dissimulated 
and thanked the Spaniards for the confidence they had in his nation; he consented 
to form an alliance with them against the Missouris and to join them with all his 
forces to destroy them, but he represented that his people were not armed and 
that they dare not expose themselves without arms in‘such an enterprise. De- 
ceived by so favorable a reception, the Spaniards fell into the trap laid for them ; 
they received with ceremony, in the little camp they had formed on their arrival, 
the calumet which the great chief of the Missouris presented to the Spanish com 
mander. The alliance war,sworn to by both parties, they agreed upon a day for 
the execution of the plan which they meditated, and the Spaniards furnished the 
savages*with all the munitions which they thought were needed. After this cere- 
mony. both parties gave themselves up equally to joy and good cheer. At the 
end of three days two thousand savages were armed and in the midst of dances 
and amusements, each nation thought of nothing but the execution of his design. 
{ William de Lisle, an officer of the French army whose maps of Louisiana were very correct for the time 
of their publication. 
