Note I-62 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Apparently a misprint: Alma to Read's Landing, near the foot of Lake Pepin, 12 m. by the crooked channel; thence to Wakouta, near the head of the lake, is only 25 m., and Pike is not yet halfway through. He says himself that he made 3 m. further to Sandy pt., and then 18 m. up to Cannon r. He undoubtedly ran for shelter from the gale at or near Stockholm, Pepin Co., Wis. The channel is or has lately been along the Minnesota side to Lake City, crossing obliquely to the other side in passing Stockholm, then leaving for the Minn. side to reach Point No Point, and so on up this side to Wakouta, Red Wing, and Cannon r. "Le lac est petit, mais il est malin": I faithfully copy this venerable Jo Miller, and am ready to agree that the lake is not big, but bad. It is reckoned about 21 m. long, averaging about 2½ broad; thus it is merely a dilation of the Mississippi, like that of the St. Croix and some other Mississippian tributaries, though on a larger scale. The Chippewa r. was concerned in the formation of Lake Pepin, and the two have had some reciprocal effect. General Warren's opinion may be here cited, Ex. Doc. No. 57, 1866-67, p. 11: "In order to better understand the formation of the present bottom-land valley, and comprehend the existing state of things, we must go back to the time when, by the elevation of the continent above the ocean, the present rivers, like the Wisconsin and Chippeway, began to flow into the channel formed by the present Mississippi bluffs. As soon as the sediment brought down by their waters had filled up the lateral chasm by which they joined the Mississippi, this sediment would begin to obstruct the flow of the Mississippi water, force its channel to the opposite side, and narrow and dam it back till the water gained sufficient force to carry the sediment down the valley. The continual sorting out of this sediment would leave the heavier particles behind, so that this bar would continually increase in elevation and form a lake above. There are evidences of the effect of the Wisconsin in making such a dam in the neighborhood of Prairie du Chien, also by other affluents above their mouths, which lakes have since been filled up. In the case of the Chippeway and Lake Pepin this effect still remains, the affluents above the Chippeway not having been able to fill up the lake which was formed. It seems almost impossible to doubt that this is the origin of Lake Pepin, and there are evidences in the shape of the sand and boulder spits along the Mississippi bluffs above Lake Pepin, such as are only formed now in it and Lake St. Croix, which indicate that the lake formerly extended up much higher than now.... The river now enters Lake Pepin by three principal mouths, and the land of the delta gently slopes down to and under the water. It has advanced very slowly, if at all, since first visited by white men. The largest sized cottonwood trees, dying of old age, are found on the islands within two miles of the head of the lake. The small willows on the low and extreme points seem of an almost uniform size and age; and are small more, perhaps, from the unfavorable condition in which they are placed than from want of time to grow since the land was formed. The bottom in the shoal places at the head of Lake Pepin is composed of soft mud, and not of sand. It seems probable that nearly all the other islands of the Mississippi were formed in similar lakes by advancing deltas, until finally the lakes were filled up. Lake Pepin has almost no current, and deepens gradually down to near the point of entrance of the Chippeway, and then rapidly shoals and narrows to form again the flowing river." Lake Pepin is curved on itself, more so than the old-fashioned Italic letter ſ, there being a bend in the middle reach which is oblique between the straight and approximately parallel reaches at the two ends—say W. N. W. and E. S. E., then N. and S., then nearly W. and E. The lake nearly fills the space between the bluffs in which it is embedded, but there are several pieces of arable bottom-land in places where the bluffs recede, furnishing the sites of a corresponding number of settlements, mostly at points where creeks or brooks fall in between gaps in the hills. Such are Pepin and Stockholm, Pepin Co., Wis.; Maiden Rock City and Bay City, Pierce Co., Wis.; Lake City, Wabasha Co., Minn.; Florence, Frontenac, and Wakouta or Wacouta, Goodhue Co., Minn. Maiden Rock City is under the line of bluffs, about 400 feet high, to several of which the Winona legend attaches; but this town is at the mouth of Rush cr., and thus nearly 5 m. by the railroad above that bluff to which the names of Maiden's Rock, Maiden's Head, and Lover's Leap more particularly belong. This is directly opposite Sandy point, and only about 2 m. by rail above the village of Stockholm; being that one of the series of quite similar bluffs which has a remarkable vertical escarpment, at a point where there is little room to spare for the track between the talus at its foot and the lake shore. A good view is obtained as the cars recede from it. Rush cr. is mapped both by Pike and by Nicollet, without name; it seems to be that called Porcupine-Quill cr. by Schoolcraft, and is perhaps Marchessau r. of Featherstonhaugh. A similar stream, also mapped by Pike and by Nicollet, without name, and now known as Pine or Mill Pine cr., falls in 1½ m. below Rush cr. Three other small streams, known as Bogus cr., Lost cr., and Roaring r., fall in below Stockholm on the Wisconsin side; on which side, near the head of the lake, at the place called Bay City, is Isabel cr. (the Clear Water cr. of Nicollet, and perhaps the Rocher Rouge r. of Featherstonhaugh). On the Minnesota side a creek falls in below and another above Lake City; Wells cr. (the Sandy Point cr. of Pike, and the Sand Point r. of Nicollet), falls in at the point indicated by these names, a mile or more below Frontenac; while at Wacouta we find a stream mapped by Nicollet without name, formerly called Bullard's and now known as Ida cr. The most prominent part of the Minnesota shore, where the channel sweeps around the convexity of the bold headland, is fittingly called Point No Point—as the up-bound passenger discovers when the boat rounds it. This is immediately above Frontenac, opp. Maiden Rock City, and about the junction of the middle with the upper reach of the lake. This body of water is between two States and four counties. The line between Pepin and Pierce cos., Wis., strikes it at or near Maiden Rock City; that between Wabasha and Goodhue, Minn., comes to the lake below Frontenac, about Lake City.

Lake Pepin is commonly said to have been "discovered by Hennepin" in 1680. This statement is exactly one-third right and two-thirds wrong, and does a double injustice, because it ignores two of the three white men who were simultaneously on the spot. These were: 1. Michael Accault, the bourgeois or leader of the party, who afterward flourished under the style of Le Sieur d'Accault, d'Acau, d'Ako, Dacan, etc. 2. His man Antoine Auguelle, commonly called Le Picard, or Picard du Gay. 3. His ecclesiastical functionary Louis Hennepin, a monk of the Franciscan order, whom La Salle got rid of by sending him along with Accault and Auguelle, when this Chaas trading-party started from Fort Crèvecœur on the Illinois r., Feb. 29th, 1680; they reached the Miss. r. at the mouth of the Illinois, Mar. 7th, 1680, and came to Lake Pepin in June of that year. It is a pity that the reverend father's vanity, servility, and envy prevented him from sticking to his ghostly trade; but he was ambitious of authorship, like many another religious worldling, and jealous of La Salle. So he set about a book for the glory of a trinity composed of Louis Hennepin, Louis XIV., and God. It has made much trouble for geographers and historians, who would willingly have waited for all the information that it contains till this should have been imparted by some less bigoted, less bombastic, and more veracious chronicler than this Recollect priest, who recollected a good many things that never happened, and forgot some of those that did occur. Hennepin is the able philologist who discovered that the Indians called their solar deity by the name of the then King of France, and who followed up this discovery by naming the whole country Louisiana. He is the same unscrupulous courtier who represents the king's arms to have been cut in the bark of an oak west of Lac des Assenipoils, ca. lat. 60° N.: see his map, place marked "Armes du Roy telle quel^le sont grauée sur l'escorce d'vn Chesne a lendroit marqué—A". The tree may be there yet, but the monk never was. Lahontan's fables are entertaining, like La Fontaine's; Hennepin's are a bore. When this little Louis is not wheedling the great Louis, he is apt to be whining; he was troubled with gumboils, from dental caries, and did not always remember the excellent injunction he received from Father Gabriel—viriliter age et comfortetur cor tuum; which an Englishman might freely render, "Be a man and keep your courage up." This missionary lachrymosely named the lake, to which Accault, Auguelle, and himself were taken by the Indians, Lac des Pleurs, a phrase which appears in Engl. transls. of his book as Lake of Tears, "which we so named," as Shea's text reads, p. 198, "because the Indians who had taken us, wishing to kill us, some of them wept the whole night, to induce the others to consent to our death"—hinc illæ lacrymæ. Hennepin, by the way, says further, ibid.: "Half a league below the Lake of Tears, on the south side, is Buffalo river." This would make R. aux Bœufs = Chippewa r.: see note⁵⁹, p. 58, for some bearings on the case. The obscurity of the origin of the name Lake Pepin has not been cleared up, so far as I know. Lesueur came here Sept. 14th, 1700, and "Pepin" is found in La Harpe's MS. relation of Lesueur's journey of July 12th-Dec. 13th, 1700. It is unlikely that this name, by whomever given, was bestowed with direct reference to any person of the Carlovingian dynasty; they were all dead and gone ages before the lake was discovered, when nobody but historical researchers took any interest in those defunct monarchs. St. Croix's and St. Pierre's rivers were certainly named for contemporaneous individuals, and so probably was Lake Pepin. There were a number of Frenchmen by the name of Pepin, Papin, etc., in the country in later years, and some one or more of them may have come before 1700. Carver first came here Nov. 1st, 1766; he notes the remains of an old F. factory, "where it is said Capt. St. Pierre resided." Old Ft. St. Antoine may have been on the lake rather than at the mouth of R. des Bœufs ou de Bon Secours; and the lake was once called Lac de Bon Secours, or Bonsecours, a phrase which has been translated Lake Good Help and Lake Relief. Fort Beauharnois was built on the lake, after Sept. 17th, 1727, when La Perriere du Boucher landed on Pointe au Sable or elsewhere; the exact site is unknown. This was an extensive and substantial structure, and was named in honor of the then Governor of Canada; it included a mission-house which the ecclesiastical functionaries of Boucher's outfit called St. Michael, after an archangel of that denomination. This was the fourth French establishment; the other three having been Fort L'Huillier, 1700, built by Lesueur, on the Blue Earth r., a branch of St. Pierre's; the fort on Isle Pelée, below Hastings, by Lesueur also, in 1695; and the fort below the foot of Lake Pepin, at or near present Wabasha, built by Perrot, 1683.