EARLY NOTICES OF THE MISSOURI RIVER AND INDIANS. 117 



"ans." At another place he mentions a meeting with the Arkansas and says: 

 ''We told them we were going further down to their neighbors and friends, that 

 ''they would see us often, that they would do well to assemble all together, so as 

 ' 'more easily to resist their enemies. They agreed to all and promised to try and 

 "make the Osages join them, who had left the river of the Missouris and were on 

 "the upper waters of their river." In the year 1700 M. Le Seuer, a Canadian 

 and kinsman of Iberville, was sent to establish a post at the source of the Missis' 

 sippi and in his narrative of the voyage he refers to the Missouri as follows : 

 "The Sioux generally keep to the prairies between the upper Mississippi and the 

 "river of the Missouris and live solely by hunting." At another place he says : 

 "We ascertained that the Ayavoes and Octoctatas* had gone to station themselves 

 "on the side of the river of the Missouri in the neighborhood of the Maha, a na- 

 "tion dwelling in those quarters." Under the date of 1702 he refers to a meeting 

 he had with some Canadians as follows : "Having gone six leagues and a quar- 

 "ter I halted at the mouth of the Missouri river and met here three Canadian trav 

 "elers who were coming to join my company. I received by them a letter from 

 "Father Marest, of the Mission of the Immaculate Conception in Illinois, warning 

 "me that the Languetas had been defeated by the Sioux and Ayavoes and had 

 "joined with a part of the Mecoutins,f Foxes and Mitsigamias to avenge them 

 selves, not upon the Sioux, for they fear them too much, possibly upon the Aya- 

 voes, perhaps on the Paonties|, or more likely upon the Osages, for these mistrust 

 nothing and the others are upon their guard. 



Father Gravier, one of the most prominent of the early missionaries of the 

 west, in writing of a voyage that he made down the Mississippi in 1 700 says : 

 "The Arkansas river runs northwest, and by ascending it they go to reach the riv- 

 er of the Missouris by making a portage." This portage could be made between 

 the branches of these rivers, but not the main streams. As most of the traveling in 

 those days was made with canoes, it was essential to have a knowledge of the cross- 

 ings or portages. Father Gabriel Marest, in a letter from Kaskaskia dated Nov, 

 9th, 1712, says: "Seven leagues below the mouth of the Illinois river is found a 

 large river named Missouri, or more commonly the 'Pektanoni,' that is to say 

 'muddy water,' which empties into the Mississippi from the west side. It is ex- 

 tremely rapid and soils the beautiful waters of the Mississippi, which run from 

 there to the sea. It comes from the northwest very near the mines which the 

 Spanish have in Mexico, and is very convenient to the French who travel in that 

 country." In another place he says, "We are but thirty leagues from the Missou- 

 ri or Pektanoni. This is a large river which flows into the Mississippi, and they 

 pretend that it comes from a still greater distance than that river. It is up on the 

 Missouri river that the Spaniards have their best mine." 



*Iowas and Otoes. 



fThis tribe of Indians early disappeared. They were generally known as the Fire Nation. At the time of 

 the first exploration of the west by the French, their home was west of Lake Michigan, in what would now 

 be the State of Wisconsin. 



JPah Utah— now Ute. 



