1770.] moncachtabe's account of a great river. 145 



Aguilar, River Thegayo, or some other, represented on the author- 

 ity of accounts received from Indians, or of erroneous or fabulous 

 narratives of voyages along the North Pacific coasts. When we 

 consider the many and glaring plagiarisms, from the works above 

 mentioned, committed by Carver, we certainly have a right to sus- 

 pect, if not to conclude, that he derived from the same source 

 every thing relating to his River of the West, which he pretends to 

 have collected from the Indians of the Upper Mississippi. As to) 

 the name Oregon, or the authority for its use, the traveller is silent;; 

 and nothing has been learned from any other source, though muchf 

 labor has been expended in attempts to discover its meaning and] 

 derivation : it was, most probably, invented by Carver. 



The most distinct and apparently authentic of these Indian 

 accounts of great rivers flowing from the central parts of North 

 America to the Pacific, is that recorded by the French traveller 

 Lepage Dupratz, as received from a native of the Yazoo country, 

 named Moncachtabe. The amount of this statement is — that the 

 Indian ascended the Missouri north-westward, to its source, beyond 

 which he found another great river, running towards the setting 

 sun ; this latter he descended to a considerable distance, though 

 not to its termination, which he was prevented from reaching by 

 wars among the tribes inhabiting the country on its banks ; though 

 he learned, from a woman who had been made prisoner by the tribe 

 with which he took part, that the river entered a great water, where 

 ships had been seen, navigated by white men with beards. All this 

 is related, with many accompanying circumstances, tending to 

 confirm the probability of the narrative ; and there is, indeed, 

 nothing about it which should induce us to reject it as false, except 

 the part respecting the ships and white men, which may have been 

 an embellishment added by Moncachtabe.* The course of this 

 supposed stream is laid down on several maps of North America, 

 published about 1750, in which it is called the Great River of the 

 West ; and one of these maps probably formed the basis of Carver's 

 story. 



The first actual discovery of a river in the northernmost section 

 of America, not emptying into the Atlantic or Hudson's Bay, was 

 made, in 1771, by Mr. Samuel Hearne, one of the agents of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, who also obtained the earliest exact infor- 

 mation respecting the regions west and north-west of that bay. 



* The account may be found at length in the Mimoires sur la Louisiane, by the 

 Abbe le Mascrier, published at Paris in 1753, vol. ii. p. 246. 



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