Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820: Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
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Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820: Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Great Lakes (North America); Mississippi River -- Sources; Northwest, Old -- Description and travel
It was five o'clock A. M. when we resumed our march through this
toilsome tract, and we passed out of it, after pressing forward with our
best might, during twelve hours. We had been observant of the perplexity
of our guides, who had unwittingly, we thought, plunged us into this
dreary and seemingly endless morass, and were rejoiced, on a sudden, to
hear them raise loud shouts. They had reached a part of the country
known to them, and took this mode to express their joy, and we soon
found ourselves on the banks of a small clear stream, called by them
Bezhiki Seebi, or Buffalo Creek, a tributary to Sandy Lake. We had, at
length, reached waters flowing into the Mississippi. On this stream we
prepared to encamp, in high spirits, feeling, as those are apt to who
have long labored at an object, a pleasure in some measure proportioned
to the exertions made.
Any other people but the Indians would feel ill at ease in dreary
regions like these. But these sons of the forest appear to carry all
their socialities with them, even in the most forbidding solitudes. They
are so familiarized with the notions of demons and spirits, that the
wildest solitude is replete with objects of hope and fear. We had
evidence of this, just before we encamped on the banks of the Bezhiki,
when we came to a cleared spot, which had been occupied by what the
Canadians, with much force, call a _jonglery_, or place of necromantic
ceremonies of their priests or jossakeeds. There were left standing of
this structure six or eight smooth posts of equal length, standing
perpendicularly. These had been carefully peeled, and painted with a
species of ochrey clay. The curtains of bark, extending between them,
and isolating the powow, or operator, had been removed; but the
precincts had the appearance of having been carefully cleared of brush,
and the ground levelled, for the purposes of these sacred orgies, which
exercise so much influence on Indian society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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