Note I-59 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Fountain City to Alma, 22 m. Camp opp. Alma, in Wabasha Co., Minn., amid the intricacies of the Zumbro delta. For many miles above and below this place—from Chippewa r. down to Winona, say 40 m.—the Father of Waters, like the father of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, if we can credit the chronicles of that ancient mariner, gets himself in very bad form. He reels along as if he would like to take both sides of the bluffs at once. Great skill has been shown by engineers in trying to steer him in the way he should go; much money has been spent in throwing out jetties like friends at each elbow of the staggering patriarch, to mend his ways; some of his worst lurches have been dammed as a matter of necessity, and all of them have been otherwise objurgated as a matter of course by every steamboat captain. The late General G. K. Warren, who was intrusted with the responsible duty of surveying the river with reference to the improvement of navigation, makes a most accurate observation in his preliminary Rep., Ex. Doc. No. 57, 2d Sess. 39th Congr., p. 19: "It is often remarked, 'What a slight thing will cause a change of the river.' But it is erroneous to infer from this that it is easy to make it change as we wish. Effects are often accumulating unobserved during a state of unstable equilibrium. A slight cause then disturbs this, and marked changes take place. But it is exceedingly superficial to attribute the whole effect to this last cause." In consequence of the great changes in the river, both natural and artificial, since the days of Pike, we must not assume the present or quite recent details to be those of Pike's time; nor should we presume to speak censoriously regarding the identification of such things as Carver's supposed fortifications of 1766-67. Within the bounds of the solid, if not eternal hills, through which the water has excavated its trough, we have the great river safe enough. But these bounds are some miles apart, and between them all is in the "unstable equilibrium" of which the eminent engineer just cited speaks. The result is incessant shiftiness or shiftlessness, not only as regards the sloughy bottoms and snicarties themselves, but in respect of the sands which accumulate in various places and form banks or terraces which sometimes take such shapes as to be easily mistaken for artificial mounds. The cardinal principle of sound archæology is to assume every mound to be a natural formation until it is proven to be the work of man. One of the most notable historical instances in point is that of the "fortifications" at Bon Homme, on the Missouri r., which deceived even so accurate an observer as Captain Clark: see L. and C., ed. 1893, p. 103, seq., and pl. Some of the present or quite recent water-ways in the vicinity of Fountain City are those known as Pap chute, Betsy, Haddock, and Rollingstone sloughs, Horseshoe bend, and Fountain City bay, into which Eagle cr. falls, under Eagle bluff. The hills then come to the river on the Minnesota side, and so continue past Mt. Vernon to Minneiska. One of the boldest of these headlands is called Chimney Rock. Some have an altitude of 450 feet. On the other side the bluffs recede above Fountain City, break to give passage to Eagle c., start again about 2½ m. from the river, and thence upward approach gradually till they strike the river at Alma. The space between these hills and the river bottom is partly filled by a sand terrace for about 9 m., with an average width of a mile. On the edge of the upper one of these banks is Buffalo City, 2 m. above which a place was started by the name of Belvidere. The boundary between Winona and Wabasha cos. comes on a parallel of latitude to the river at Minneiska, a town named for the river at whose mouth it is situated, under high bluffs, facing the lower part of Summerfield or Summerfield's isl., which is 4 m. long. This river is Pike's "Lean Clare," clearly by typographical error, as he elsewhere has Riviere l'Eau Clair, almost right, and correctly translates the phrase by Clear r. and Clear Water r. This is also White Water r. of Long and others, at present the usual alternative name of Minneiska r.; Miniskon r., Nicollet; Miniskah r., Owen; Minneska r., Warren; and so on with the forms of the Indian word. Clear r. comes into the bottom between the Minneiska bluffs and a certain isolated hill to the northward, in the vicinity of which Clear r. is still or was lately connected with one of the lowest sluices of the Zumbro r. This last is what Pike calls riviere Embarrass (river Embaras, ed. 1807, p. 13). The French named it Rivière aux Embarras, from the difficulty they found in attempting to navigate it, and we have made Zumbro out of this embarrassment. Nicollet calls it Wazi Oju r., in which he is followed by Owen and others. Its delta extends practically from Minneiska to Wabasha, a distance of 20 m. by the Mississippi channel. The opening which Pike takes as the mouth is the lower one, as he passes it before camping opp. Alma. This delta incloses one long, narrow sand terrace, continuous for 9 m., and several similar but smaller banks, as well as an extensive system of sloughs and islands. The West Newton chute and accompanying islands are among these; and Pike's camp was at the head of this chute, directly opposite Alma and the mouth of Buffalo r. The history of this river dates back to 1680 at least: R. des Bœufs, Hennepin, map, 1683; River of Wild Bulls, Hennep., Engl. transl.; Bœufs R., Lahontan, map; Buffaloe or Buffalo r., Pike, Long, Nicollet, Owen, etc.; Beef r., Warren and others; cf. also, R. de Bon Secours of the early F. writers, whence Good Help r. by translation. Some connect the two names, as R. des Bœufs ou de Bon Secours, as if the supply of beef had been a great relief. There were plenty of buffaloes on this part of the Mississippi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and indeed down to some early years of our own. But they were exterminated or driven off soon after Fort St. Anthony (Snelling) was built in 1819. Fort St. Antoine appears in earliest connection with the river. Its own mouth has no doubt been fixed since prehistoric times by the solid Alma bluffs around which it sweeps into the Mississippi. But the delta of Chippewa r., whose main discharge is by a contracted opening 9½ direct miles above the mouth of Buffalo r., extends between these two points, and is meandered by the intricacies of Beef slough, which such competent professional opinion as Warren's pronounces to have once divided the main Chippewa: Ex. Doc. No. 57, etc., p. 13. "The Chippeway river had a large lateral gorge like that of the St. Croix to fill up before reaching the valley of the Mississippi, and it now joins the Mississippi by a very complete set of delta streams, beginning about 15 miles above its mouth. There was a time when the mouth now known as Beef slough was about equal to the main Chippeway. In their growth each kept along the bluffs or sides of the gorge they were filling up, raising their immediate banks and leaving a depression between them. The bank which the present Mississippi finally put across the delta was not then there, and large trees grew up on this intermediate space. The delta having finally reached the Mississippi, the water was more rapidly raised in Lake Pepin. This intermediate space was closed up on its third side by the new forming bank of the Mississippi, and became a lake. The trees in it then perished, and their submerged parts, preserved by the water, remain standing in the lake at this time [July 31st, 1865]. This place is known as Stump lake, and this name it bore among the aboriginal Sioux (Chan-poksa-m'dé). The lower of these two delta mouths became obstructed and dammed up by the new forming banks of the Mississippi; the lower part of it then filled up, and it finally broke through its own banks into Stump lake, so that it now issues therefrom in several much obstructed channels, almost entirely useless to navigation.... The Trempealeau and Black rivers repeat the operation of the Chippeway on a smaller scale, the Wisconsin probably on a greater, other streams doing the same in proportion to their size." In this view of Beef slough as an obstructed channel of the Chippewa, Beef or Buffalo r. is simply an affluent of the Chippewa, precisely as the Minneiska is of the Zumbro, or La Crosse of Black r.; and other such cases of originally distinct rivers falling into the Mississippi as one by their deltopoetic processes could easily be cited.