The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Volume 2 (of 3): To Headwaters of the Mississippi River Through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, During the Years 1805-6-7.Coues, Elliott
History
The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Volume 2 (of 3): To Headwaters of the Mississippi River Through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, During the Years 1805-6-7.
Coues, Elliott
Mississippi River -- Description and travel; New Mexico -- Description and travel; Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 1779-1813 -- Travel -- West (U.S.); West (U.S.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Discovery and exploration; West (U.S.) -- History -- To 1848
[I-13] The proper name of the interpreter, whom Pike usually calls
"Baroney," was A. F. Baronet Vasquez. He was b. St. Louis, 1783; his
wife was Emily Faustine Parent. He was the son of Benito Vasquez (b.
1750) and Julia Papin (married Nov. 27th, 1774), and was the fifth
child of 12 they had. He appears in army registers as Barony Vasquez,
appointed to be an ensign in the 2nd Infantry Dec. 12th, 1808;
transferred to 1st Infantry Oct. 31st, 1810; commissioned as second
lieutenant Mar. 4th, 1811; promoted to a first lieutenancy July 30th,
1813; and resigned Oct. 1st, 1814. See also a letter about him in my
Memoir of Pike, _anteà_.
[I-14] See note 7, p. 361. La Charette is still the name of the
stream, and of the extensive bottom on the N. side through which the
river seeks the Missouri. But the settlement once so called is not to
be found by this name on modern maps. Instead of this we have
Marthasville (3 m. N. of which stands still the house in which Daniel
Boone died), a village about a mile from the Missouri, and nearly
midway between the points where La Charette cr. and Tuque cr.
respectively enter the bottom. Marthasville appears on maps of 50
years ago, as for example, on Nicollet's, 1843. Gass calls the place
St. Johns where he camped May 25th, 1804; it then had seven houses:
see L. and C., ed. 1893, p. 8. St. Johns is now the name of the
largest one of a cluster of islands and sand-bars in an expanded part
of the Missouri, between the mouth of La Charette cr. on the N. and of
St. Johns or Bourbeuse cr. on the S., 2 m. and more above the town of
Washington, Franklin Co. Pike maps "S^t. Johns R." correctly between
his "Ash R." (error for Wood or Dubois cr.) and his "Bay R." (error
for Boeuf r.). Washington is the most notable place Pike passes
to-day; it is now quite a town, large enough to have started a place
opposite itself, called North Washington, on Lac's pt. in Warren Co.
Here is where, at the 69th river-mile point, a creek falls in on the
N.; it is commonly called Tuque cr., though Sheet III. of the Mo. R.
Comm. charts has "Duke" as the name. It looks like a French word, but
whether it be a personal name, or derived from _Toque_ or _Turque_,
does not appear. It is one of two creeks which L. and C. speak of
passing on the N., May 25th; the other one of these has never been
identified. But there is an old lake bed, or something of the sort, a
couple of miles back of North Washington, in Hancock's bottom, under
the bluffs, and I imagine this once discharged about opp. Dubois or
Wood cr.--say at Rieskamp's place, on the boundary between St. Charles
and Warren cos. Tuque cr. itself seems to have had more than one
outlet, in the course of the several miles it meanders the low land
and separates Hancock's bottom from La Charette.
[I-15] Originally Docs. Nos. 5 and 6, p. 33 and p. 36 of the App. to
Pt. 2. They are given beyond.
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