Fifteen miles north of Jackson, on a little stream called Apple creek, reside about four hundred Indians, mostly Delawares and Shawnees. At the time of our visit the head of a Shawnee, who had been concerned in the murder of a white woman, was to be seen elevated on a pole by the side of the road leading from Jackson to the Indian settlement of Apple creek. It was related to us that the crime, for which this punishment had been inflicted, was committed at the instigation of a white man. The murderer was demanded of the Shawnees by the people of Jackson, and being at length discovered by the Indians, and refusing to surrender himself, he was shot by his own people, and his head delivered up, agreeable to the demand. It is painful to witness the degradation and misery of this people, once powerful and independent; still more so to see them submitting to the unnecessary cruelties of their oppressors. We have not been informed by what authority the punishment above mentioned was inflicted upon a whole community for the crime of one of its members, and we are sorry to have occasion to record a circumstance so little honourable to the people of Missouri. A miserable remnant of the Shawnee, Delaware, and Peola tribes, with a few Chickasaws and Cherokees, were at this time scattered through the country, from the Mississippi at the mouth of Apple creek westward to the sources of Black river. They were, however, about to remove farther west, and many of them were already on their way to the country about the upper branches of White river, where, by becoming intruders upon the territories of the Cherokees, it may be expected their speedy and entire extinction will be insured.[31] {147} The road from White river joins that from the upper settlements on the St. Francis, at some distance beyond Jackson. Castor and White water are two beautiful streams, traversing the country west of Jackson. They run towards the south, and soon after their confluence enter the great swamp through which they find their way to the St. Francis. The district of the lead mines, situated near the sources of the Merameg, the Gasconade, and the St. Francis, has been repeatedly described. The best accounts of it are in the works of Bradbury, Brackenridge, Stoddart, and Schoolcraft.[32] To those accounts we have to add a few observations respecting the rocks and soils of the region, a considerable part of which we have seen and examined as attentively as circumstances would admit. But as discussions of this kind have little interest for the general reader, we propose to give at the end of the work such remarks as we have had the opportunity to make connected with the mineralogy of this interesting territory. FOOTNOTES: [1] Chapter ix in volume iii of the original London edition.