144 MISREPRESENTATIONS OF CARVER. [1766. 



to which those vague descriptions and allusions apply, with the 

 Columbia, or with any other river. The Columbia does not rise 

 within a few leagues, or a few hundred leagues, of the waters of 

 the Red River, the St. Lawrence, or the Upper Mississippi, which 

 latter Carver carefully distinguishes from the Missouri; nor does 

 either of those rivers, flowing to the Atlantic, rise near the great, 

 dividing ridge of the Shining Mountains ; which ridge, moreover, 

 does not end about the 48th degree of latitude, but continues more 

 than a thousand miles farther north-westward. If, under circum- 

 stances so different, we consider the head-waters of the Columbia 

 to be the same described by Carver as the head-waters of the 

 Oregon, we should, a fortiori, admit the mouth of the Columbia to 

 be the same mouth of a river which Aguilar is said to have discov- 

 ered in 1603. 



Carver's descriptions of places, people, and things, in the Indian 

 countries, are vague, and often contradictory ; and, where they can 

 be understood, they are, for the most part, repetitions of the 

 accounts of those or of other parts of America, given by the old 

 French travellers and historians, whose works he, nevertheless, takes 

 great pains to disparage, whenever he mentions them.* In many of 

 those works, the belief in the existence of a great river, flowing 

 from the vicinity of the head-waters of the Mississippi, westward, 

 to the Pacific, is distinctly affirmed, as founded on the reports of the 

 Indians ; and on nearly all maps of North America, published 

 during the early part of the last century, may be found one or more 

 of such streams, under the names of River of the West, River of 



* In proof that no injustice is here done to Carver's memory, read his magisterial 

 and contemptuous remarks on the works of Hennepin, Lahontan, and Charlevoix, in 

 the first chapter of his account of the origin, manners, &c, of the Indians; and 

 then compare his chapters describing, as from personal observation, the ceremonies 

 of marriage, burial, hunting, and others, of the natives of the Upper Mississippi coun- 

 tries, with those of Lahontan, showing the conduct of the Iroquois, of Canada, on 

 similar occasions, by which it will be seen that Carver has simply translated from 

 Lahontan the ickole of the accounts, even to the speeches of the chiefs. Carver's chapter 

 on the origin of the Indians is merely an abridgment from Charlevoix's "Disserta- 

 tion" on the same subject. His descriptions of the language, manners, and customs, 

 of the inhabitants of the Upper Mississippi regions, are entirely at variance with those 

 of the same tribes at the present day, as clearly shown by the observations of Pike, 

 Long, and other persons of unquestionable character, who have since visited that part 

 of America. Keating, in his interesting narrative of Long's expedition in 1823, 

 expresses his belief that Carver " ascended the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony, 

 that he saw the St. Peter, and that he may have entered it; but, had he resided five 

 months in the country, and become acquainted with the language of the people, he 

 would not have applied to them the name of Naudoioessies, and omitted to call them 

 the Dacota Indians, as they style themselves.'' 



