118 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



It will be seen that the Spanish mines in New Mexico were attracting the at- 

 tention of the Jesuits, who advised their superiors of any and everything that could 

 possible be of interest or benefit to their order. Father Charlevoix, in one of his 

 letters to tlie Duchess of Les De Guireres,* dated at Kaskaskia, Oct. 20, 1721, has 

 the following relative to the Missouri and Osages. "The Osages, a pretty nu- 

 merous nation, settled on the side of a river that bears their name and which runs 

 into the Missouri about forty leagues from its junction with the Mississippi, send 

 once or twice a year to dance the calumet amongst the Kaskaskias, and are actual- 

 ly here at present. I have also just now seen a Missouri woman who told me that 

 her nation is the first we meet with going up the Missouri, from which she has the 

 name we have given her for want of knowing her true name. It is situated eighty 

 leagues from the confluence of that river with the Mississippi. This woman has 

 confirmed to me what I heard from the Sioux, that the Missouri rises out of some 

 naked mountains, very high behind which there is a great river which probably 

 rises from them also and which runs to the west. This testimony carries some 

 weight, because of all the Indians we know none travel further than the Missou- 

 rites." This great river that runs to the west, and of which he heard from the 

 Sioux and Missouris both, was undoubtedly the Columbia, and the fact that it 

 was known to the Missouris is an evidence that they were indeed great travelers, 

 and this was true of many of the Indian tribes. The Osages rambled to Texas 

 on the south. New Mexico on the west and Lake Michigan on the northeast. The 

 New England Indians who were dispersed in the King Philip war were for a time 

 located in Northern Illinois. La Salle had with him Indians from Maine. The 

 Shawnees at different times were located in what are now the states of Pennsyl- 

 vania, South Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois, and other instances could be 

 quoted if space would permit. The question of a route to the Pacific Ocean was 

 at this time agitating the minds of many of the enterprising French located at 

 Kaskaskia, and several "reports" were made to the home government setting forth 

 the feasibility of a route by way of the Missouri. Father Charlevoix suggests the 

 exploration of the river as follows : "I can make no doubt on weighing the in- 

 formation I have had from many places and which agree pretty well together, 

 that by endeavoring to penetrate to the source of the Missouri one would find 

 wherewithal to make amends for the charges and fatigues of such an enterprise." 

 Of the Missouri and Mississippi the same writer says: "After we had gone five 

 leagues on the Mississippi we arrived at the mouth of the Missouri, which runs 

 north, northwest and south, southeast. I beheve this is the finest confluence in 

 the world. The two rivers are much the same breadth, each about half a league, 

 but the Missouri is by far the most rapid and seems to enter the Mississippi like a 

 conqueror, through which it carries its white waters to the opposite shore without 

 mixing them, afterward it gives its color to the Mississippi, which it never loses 

 again, but carries it qu.te down to the sea." 



<"Journal of a voyage to North America, undertaken by order of the French King.translated from the French, 

 London, 1761. 



