Note I-49 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Say Island No. 142, or head of No. 143, for a present location which exactly fits, being on E. side, 4 or 5 m. below mouth of Upper Iowa r., and opp. De Soto, Wis., on the border of Crawford and Vernon cos. The camp itself is of little consequence, in comparison with the notable points passed to reach it, at Pike's Cape Garlic and in that vicinity. At the head of Harper and Crooked sloughs the channel runs under the Iowan bluffs to Lansing, Allamakee Co., Ia., 12½ m. from Lynxville. On the Wisconsin side for the same distance is a remarkably labyrinthic snicarty, whose principal run is called Winneshiek slough, upon which is Ferryville, Crawford Co., Wis., at or near the mouth of Sugar cr. The series of creeks which fall into these sloughs is as follows, in ascending order: Kettle, above Polander hollow; Copper, above Cumming's hollow; Buck (duplicating a name: see last note); the Sugar cr. just said; and Rush, above Ferryville. The river sweeps under the bold Iowan headlands, two prominent points of which became known as Cape Garlic and Cape Winnebago—one from the alliaceous plant growing there, and the other from the incident about to be cited; while two of the four streams which fall in through four breaks on these bluffs were correspondingly called Garlic r. or Cape Garlic cr., and Winnebago r. or Cape Winnebago cr. Authors differ as to which is which; I make the following determinations: 1. At the point where the main channel of the Mississippi divides into Crooked and Harper sloughs, 8 m. below Lansing, and near where Heytman had his landing, a large creek falls in. This is properly Garlic r.—the one on which the town of Capoli is situated. Capoli means Cape Garlic, being a perversion of the F. Cap à L'Ail—a phrase that has been peculiarly unlucky at the hands of compositors and engravers; even on Nicollet's map it stands by accident Cap a´ Lail, though the eminent geographer himself was un Français de France, whose mother-tongue was academic. Beltrami, II. p. 197, expands the phrase to Cape à l'Ail Sauvage. 2. Three miles above the mouth of Capoli cr. a rivulet falls in between two eminences; the lower one of these is present Capoli bluff, formerly Cap Puant or Cape Winnebago; the upper one is now called Atchafalaga bluff, formerly Cap à l'Ail or Cape Garlic; the rivulet just said is Pike's Garlic r. 3. At 4½ m. higher, through a recess in the highlands falls in the stream now called Village cr., which Nicollet maps as Cape Winnebago cr. This is the one on which the town of Village Creek is situated, 3 m. up. Its mouth is exactly a mile below the mouth of Coon or Clear cr., on which Lansing is situated, under Mt. Hosmer—this "mountain" being that part of the bluffs which is isolated between the two creeks just said to fall in a mile apart. With thus much by way of geographical determinations, I must leave to someone more familiar than I am with the local traditions or actual history of the place, to identify the exact scene of the following incident, given in Keating's Long's Exp. of 1823, pub. 1824, I. p. 266: "Two remarkable capes or points were observed on the right bank of the Mississippi below Iowa river; the lower one is designated by the name of Cape Puant, because at a time when the Sioux and Winnebagoes (Puants) were about to commence hostilities, a party of the latter set out on an expedition to invade the territory of the Sioux and take them by surprise; but these being informed of the design, collected a superior force and lay in ambush near this place, expecting the arrival of their enemies. As soon as the Winnebagoes had landed, the Sioux sallied from their hiding-places, pressed upon them as they lay collected in a small recess between the two capes, drove them into the river, and massacred the whole party. Garlic cape, just above [italics mine] this, strikes the voyager by the singularity of its appearance. In shape it represents a cone cut by a vertical plane passing through its apex and base; its height is about four hundred feet." I suppose the "small recess" of this recital to be that between present Capoli (lower) and present Atchafalaga (upper) bluffs, respectively former Cape Winnebago (lower) and former Cape Garlic (upper) bluffs.