65S KANSAS CITY RE VIE IV OF SCIENCE. 



arrived at the village of the Tamaroas on the 14th. From the extracts given, it 

 is conclusively shown that La Salle and his party spent one night on Missouri 

 soil, on their voyage to the sea, whereby France gained an empire and the world 

 its first knowledge of the mouth and full course of the Mississippi. Conceding 

 that De Soto's expedition reached the New Madrid country in 1542, this visit of 

 La Salle's party in 1681 was the second in point of time made by white men to 

 the country comprised within the borders of our State. 



The Missouri and Illinois Indians, though of entirely different stock and 

 living two hundred miles apart, were always on very friendly terms, as I have 

 shown in a former paper. Another incident bearing on this is found in an en- 

 counter mentioned by Tontz in his account of the return of La Salle's party up 

 the river. After mentioning that La Salle had been left at Fort Prudhommie 

 sick, and that he had been directed to push on with the main part of the com- 

 pany, and that they had passed the mouth of the Ohio, he says : " Four days 

 after I perceived a smoke and went to it. There came out of the forest thirty 

 Tamaroa warriors with bows bent, making their war cry at us. I presented the 

 calumet to them and one Illinois who was among them having recognized 

 me exclaimed, "It is my comrade, they are French." We landed and passed the 

 night with them. They designed to kill us, but as they were part Illinois, Emis- 

 sourites and Tamaroa, the Illinois prevented the attack." Here were the Mis- 

 souris visiting the Tamaroas and uniting with them to go on the war-path, 

 Tontz speaks 5f the Tamaroas as though they were a distinct tribe, when in reality 

 they were a branch of the Illinois, who had established their village on the banks 

 of the Mississippi. Those famiUar with the history of the trials endured by La 

 Salle in his endeavors to establish a colony on the Illinois River will recollect the 

 loss of his vessel, the Griffin, containing the greater part of his stores, and how he 

 suspected that the pilot had purposely wrecked the vessel and. taken his goods to 

 the Sioux country intending to establish himself as a trader. From letters written 

 at the time, but only recently published in the Margry volumes, it appears La 

 Salle was of the opinion that his pilot had been captured and held as a prisoner 

 among the Missouris and other tribes west of the Mississippi. In a letter dated 

 Chicago Portage, June 4, 1683, to M. de la Barre, the newly appointed governor 

 of New France, he gives an account of a story told him by an Indian lad, as fol- 

 lows : "The lad had been taken by the Pawnees, then by the Osages, who had 

 given him to the Emissourites, and they to the nation from which I had him. 

 He told us several times that he had seen two Frenchmen, three years ago, pris- 

 oners among the Matchinhoa, whom he described to us in such a manner that I 

 could not doubt but one of them was my pilot, that they had been taken in the 

 Mississippi River, which we call Colbert, ascending toward the Sioux, with four 

 others, in birch bark canoes, loaded with merchandise, among which were several 

 large grenades such as I had left in the barque; that the pilot had exploded one 

 in the presence of one of these barbarians, and having made them understand 

 that with similar ones he would burn the villages of their enemies, if they pre. 

 served his life. That he did not yet understand the language of those with whom 



