Note I-68 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Frontenac to Red Wing, some 13 miles by present channel, whence it is a couple of miles further to the head of the island opp. Cannon r. camp. Pike coasts the Minnesota shore till he finishes with the lake at the mouth of Bullard's or Ida cr., a streamlet that makes in at a town called after the chief Wakouta, Wacouta, Wakuta, etc. Here he enters one of the channels by which the Mississippi finds its way into the lake, no doubt the middle one, then as now the main one, which, however, soon joins the south one; the north channel is narrower, crookeder, shoaler, and connected with some expansions known as Upper and Lower lakes and Goose bay. The town of Red Wing is situated on the S. side of a sharp bend the river makes in coming from the Cannon, on a plain under bluffs that nearly encompass the town; one of these is specially notable as the isolated elevation forming a conspicuous landmark on the very brink of the river. This is Barn bluff, or Barn mountain, so named by tr. of F. La Grange; it is ¾ of a mile long and 345 feet above low water mark; "upon the highest point of the Grange. Major Long, who ascended it in 1817, observed an artificial mound, whose elevation above its base was about five feet," Keating, I. p. 296. Nicollet made the altitude 322 feet, with commendable caution; Owen gave 350 feet, almost correctly. This word Grange is often found as Gange: thus Beltrami has in text, p. 189, mountain of the Gange, and Gange r.; latter also on map, and I suppose Ganges r. could be found, even at this distance from India. About the mouth of Cannon r., opp. Pike's camp, there was a place called Remnichah; both Nicollet and Owen chart Remnicha r. or cr. as a stream falling in close to the mouth. While Remnicha or Hhemnicha was a name of Red Wing's village, it also covered the whole tract from Barn bluff to Cannon r. Mr. A. J. Hill informs me of "a small ravine or coulée which ran through Red Wing's village, and in 1854, when I lived there, was called the Jordan. It only headed a few blocks back, and is now doubtless a sewer or filled up." So Nicollet's Remnicha r. is that now known as Hay cr., above which a certain Spring cr. makes in on the same side. Present town of Trenton, Pierce Co., Wis., is about a mile above camp.