Note I-14 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

This stretch of "39" m. needs to be warily discussed. The whole distance from Hannibal to Keokuk by the river channel is only 61 m. Pike makes it from his camp of the 16th to that of the 19th 39 + 23 + 4 = 76 m.; he also started from a little above Hannibal on the 17th, and did not quite make Keokuk on the 19th; for he only got to the foot of the Des Moines rapids after breakfast on the 20th. The whole way would have been about 80 of his miles against say 60 of actual travel, or the proportion of 4:3, as already noted, p. 2; and we may confidently set him down on the 17th halfway between Hannibal and Keokuk. Now from Hannibal to La Grange is 30 m. and from La Grange to Keokuk is 31 m.; La Grange, Lewis Co., Mo., at the mouth of Wyaconda r., is the required location of camp of the 17th. This is 10 m. above Quincy, the seat of Adams Co., Ill., one of the best known cities on the river, though not as old as some of them. The C. B. and Q. R. R. bridged the river just above the city in 1867-68; a West Quincy grew up on the Missouri side, and the present importance of the place requires no comment. A very short distance above Quincy Pike passes from Marion into Lewis Co., Mo. But the most important point of this day's voyage is one to which the above text does not even allude. Pike elsewhere speaks of a certain Jaustioni river, as the then boundary between the U. S. and the Sac nation, 7 m. above the Frenchman's house at Hurricane Settlement, on the W. side; and he traces this river on his map by the name Jauflione. Now there are five large streams which enter the Miss. r. on the W. within 3 m. of one another, by four separate mouths, in Marion Co., say 2 to 5 miles below W. Quincy, and the proportionate distance above Hannibal. They are now known as (1) South Two Rivers; (2) North Two Rivers; (3) a branch of the latter—these three emptying practically together, just below Fabius isl.; (4) South Fabius; and (5) North Fabius rivers, which fall into a slough whose two mouths are opposite Orton's isl. Pike has left us no data to decide which of these he means by Jaustioni or Jauflione, especially as the positions of the several outlets have no doubt changed since 1805. They are all at present, or were very recently, considerably more than the "seven" miles above Hannibal, being entirely beyond the Bayou St. Charles, itself about 7 m. long. Pike's queer names, Justioni or Jaustioni, and Jauflione (latter in early text, 1807, p. 4, and on map), are found also as Jeffreon, and usually as Jeffrion. Some form of the name, the meaning of which I have never learned, endured for many years; thus Jauflione r. appears in Morse's Univ. Gaz., 3d ed. 1821, p. 350, though it had mostly disappeared from ordinary maps of about that date. The river thus designated has a history which will bear looking up. Judge Thos. H. Bacon of Hannibal refers me to certain documents bearing on French Colonial history to be found in Amer. State Papers, VI. 1860, pp. 713-14, and 830-34, also repub. in Holcombe's Hist. Marion Co., 1884. On p. 834 is: "July 10th, 1810. Board met. Present John B. C. Lucas, Clement B. Penrose, and Frederick Bates, Commissioners. Charles Gratiot, assignee of Mathurin Bouvet, claiming 84 arpents of land front on the Mississippi river and in depth from the river back to the hills in the district of St. Charles.... The Board order that this claim be surveyed, provided that it be not situated above the mouth of the River Jeffrion conformably to the possession of Mathurin Bouvet," etc. As Bouvet's claim was ultimately confirmed to Gratiot, Jeffrion r. must have been above Salt r. The next considerable river above Salt r. is that one of the "Two Rivers" called South r.; but this is hardly 30 m. long, and an Act of Dec. 31st, 1813, describes Jeffrion r. as over 30 m. long. The next one is North Two Rivers; undoubtedly it is this one which was known as the Jeffrion in Territorial days. When the region was first settled it was called the Two Rivers country, and the title of a certain Two Rivers Baptist Association preserves this designation. The Governor of Louisiana Territory was required to divide it into districts (Act of Congr., Mar. 26th, 1804, sec. 13); Holcombe's Hist. Marion Co., p. 37, says that Governor Wm. Clark by proclamation reorganized the districts into counties Oct. 1st, 1812; and doubtless the Jeffrion would be there again in mention. Bouvet's settlement on Bay Charles is unquestionable in location; it was described as about 34 leagues above St. Louis, and was a place with which the commissioners must have been officially acquainted. In history B. Charles is nearly a century older than St. Louis, and it was for many years a better known locality. Present North r. is the only one that answers the historical and geographical requirements of the north one of Two Rivers of early Territorial times and of the Jeffrion r. of French Colonial days. Holcombe, p. 148, gives an account of Kentucky prospectors on the Jeffrion in 1817. The name of the Sac chief Black Hawk occurs in connection with an incident on Two Rivers in 1812. But the most satisfactory and in fact a conclusive identification of North Two Rivers with the Jauflione is derivable from the terms of our treaty with the Sacs and Foxes of 1804. This will be found in Statutes at Large, VII. p. 84, seq.: A Treaty between the United States of America and the United Tribes of Sac and Fox Indians, made Nov. 3d, 1804, ratified Jan. 25th, 1805, and proclaimed Feb. 21st, 1805. Among the "articles of a treaty made at St. Louis in the district of Louisiana between William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana territory and of the district of Louisiana [etc., etc.] of the one part, and the chiefs and head men of the united Sac and Fox tribes of the other part," there is one defining the boundary thus: "Article 2. The general boundary or line between the lands of the United States and of the said Indian tribes shall be as follows, to wit: Beginning at a point on the Missouri river opposite to the mouth of the Gasconade river; thence in a direct course so as to strike the river Jeffreon at the distance of thirty miles from its mouth, and down the said Jeffreon to the Mississippi," etc., etc. In company with Mr. Robert F. Thompson of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Washington I made a special examination of maps in his office with reference to this point, and among them found one, prepared for office use in determining boundaries indicated in the terms of Indian treaties, on which the boundary in mention had been drawn from the Missouri opposite the mouth of the Gasconade directly to a point supposed to be 30 m. up the North Two Rivers, which I had on other grounds determined the Jauflione or Jeffreon to be. This river empties in Fabius township, in the N. W. ¼ of Sect. 3, T. 58 N., R. 5 W., Marion Co., Mo.

On this extraordinary cession see a note by L. C. D[raper] in Minn. Hist. Coll., III. Part 2, p. 143, 1874.

At the upper end of St. Charles bayou, called Bayou chute, a couple of miles below Two Rivers, was the site of a place that rejoiced on paper in the name of Marion City. They started a railroad there, were liable to wash-outs, and inspired Charles Dickens' idea of his quizzical "Eden." If one would like to see how uncounted "cities" were laid out in gaudy prints—some consisting in a hovel or two, some without even that—let him look over Featherstonhaugh's diverting relations of the '30's, when he traveled in these parts, then overrun with a set of the neediest, greediest, and most unscrupulous landsharks that ever lived on calomel, whisky, and the gullibility of their fellows. Marion City is located on one of the maps before me, but not on any of the others. A little above it are Fabius and Orton isls., already mentioned, and opposite these is Ward's isl., larger than either of the other two. A couple of miles above Quincy begins the group of Cottonwood isls., opposite a large horseshoe-shaped slough which seems to be an old cut-off of the river; it is connected with the Fabius r. outlets, and receives Durgan's (i. e., Durkee's) cr. At Quincy is the lower outlet of a very extensive snicarty, 12 or 15 m. direct, and much more by its sinuosities; this begins at Canton (above La Grange) and connects at various points with Canton chute, itself some 10 m. long. La Grange, where Pike camps, was so called from the hill under which it nestled, and the English of which would be Barn hill. The original settlement was named Wyaconda or Waconda, from the river at whose mouth it was made; thus Nicollet's map marks Wiyakonda instead of La Grange, preserving the Indian name of the place. This river is a large one which, with its branches, traverses Scotland and Clark cos. before entering Lewis Co. Before settlement a certain tract of country below La Grange had been called Waconda prairie, or in some similar form of the Indian word, as Wacondaw of Maj. Thos. Forsyth, 1819; and this is what Pike's map presents as the "Small Prairie."