Note I-69 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Discovery of the St. Croix r. is commonly attributed to Accault's party, already mentioned as consisting of himself, Auguelle, and Hennepin, prisoners in the hands of the Sioux at the time. The date is 1680; day in question. According to La Salle's letter of Aug. 22d, 1682, written at Fort Frontenac, in Margry's Relations, II. p. 245 seq., it was very shortly after the 22d of April, 1680, when the Indians who were carrying them off had come up the Mississippi to 8 leagues below the falls of St. Anthony, and then determined to finish their journey by land to their village at Mille Lacs. As the St. Croix is more than 24 m. below Minneapolis, this party must have passed its mouth about the date said. The Memoir of Le Sieur Daniel Greysolon Du Luth to the Marquis of Seignelay, 1685 (Archives of the Ministry of the Marine), states that in June, 1680, he entered a river 8 leagues from the end of Lake Superior, ascended it, made a half league portage, and fell into "a very fine river," which took him to the Mississippi r. This was the St. Croix, which Du Luth thus certainly descended to its mouth at that time. He heard of the captivity of his countrymen with indignation and surprise, hired a Sioux to show him where they were, and rescued them; he says that he put them in his canoes and carried them to Michelimakinak, whence, after wintering there, they set out for the settlements Mar. 29th, 1681. It is quite possible that before the great triangular duel which La Salle, Du Luth, and Hennepin managed to arrange among themselves over the operations of 1680, the St. Croix was seen by the missionary Menard, who in 1661 may have reached the Mississippi by way of the St. Croix or some other way, and was soon after lost. Marquette is not in question here, as he came by the Wisconsin to the Mississippi and went down the latter. So with any other person who reached the Mississippi prior to 1680. Excepting the Menard matter, which is uncertain, the case narrows to Accault's party and Du Luth, within some weeks of each other, late spring and early summer of 1680; the facts appear to be that the former first passed the mouth of the St. Croix, and the latter first descended this river. Hennepin first named the river R. de Tombeau, Descr. Louis., 1683, map; this is translated Tomb r., as, e. g., Shea's Hennepin, 1880, p. 199, where we read: "Forty leagues above [Chippewa r.] is a river full of rapids, by which, striking northwest [read N. E.], you can proceed to Lake Condé [L. Superior], as far as Nimissakouat [in Margry Nemitsakouat, in the Nouv. Déc. Nissipikouet, being the Bois Brûlé] river, which empties into that lake. This first river is called Tomb river because the Issati [Sioux] left there the body of one of their warriors, killed by a rattlesnake, on whom, according to their custom, I put a blanket." Some translate Grave r. On Franquelin's map, 1688, the St. Croix is lettered R. de la Magdelaine, though a certain Fort St. Croix appears about its head; by whom it was first called Magdalene r. I am not informed. Lahontan's map shows nothing here; he was too full of his fabulous Long r. to concern himself much with real rivers. Next come Lesueur and his people, 1695; he had first reached the Mississippi in 1683, and on this his second appearance (his third being in 1700) they built the trading-house called Fort Lesueur on Pelée isl., just below the mouth of the St. Croix, as already noted. His editor, so far as this trip is concerned, is the clever carpenter Penicaut, a sensible, fair-and-square man. Just here comes in the question of the first application of the name St. Croix. The river was already so called and the name in use before 1700; thus, Nicolas Perrot's prise de possession, a document dated at Fort St. Antoine, May 8, 1689, mentions the Rivière-Sainte-Croix. The Carte du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France, par Guillame de L'Isle, Paris, 1703, traces the river and letters it "L. & R. Ste. Croix," i. e., as some have translated it, Lake and River Holy Cross; said lake being, of course, the dilation of the same bottle-nosed river, which issues from a contracted orifice, but is a mile or two wide higher up. But whatever the theological proclivity to suppose this name to have been given for the usual instrument of the execution of Roman malefactors, later put by the Emperor Constantine on his banner, and afterward used for other purposes, it is certain that the Christian crucifix is not directly implied in the name. It is a personal designation, connoting one Sainte Croix or Saint Croix, a trader named in La Harpe's MSS. of Lesueur's third voyage as a Frenchman who had been wrecked there; for we read: "September 16 he [Lesueur] passed on the east a large river called Sainte-Croix, because a Frenchman of that name was shipwrecked at its mouth." Hennepin names Sainte Croix as one of six men who deserted La Salle. A letter written in June, 1684, by Du Luth to Governor De la Barre (who succeeded Frontenac in 1682), states that the writer had met one Sieur de la Croix and his two companions. This case resembles those of La Crosse r. already noted, and St. Pierre r., noted beyond. It may be summed in the statement that St. Croix r., St. Pierre r., and Lake Pepin, were all three so named for persons, by Lesueur or his companions, not earlier than 1683 and not later than 1695; best assignable date, 1689. The river has also been called Hohang or Fish r. (cf. Sioux Hogan-wanke-kin). The character of St. Croix's r. as a waterway to the Great Lakes is elsewhere discussed. This stream now forms the boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota from its mouth to beyond 46° N., where it splits up into small streams in Burnett Co., Wis. Its general course is not far from S.—it is due S. for many miles before it falls into the Mississippi; which latter, for a great distance above their confluence, has a general bearing S. E. Immediately at the mouth of the St. Croix, on the E., is Prescott, Pierce Co., Wis., the site of which was once recommended by Long for a military post; on the W. is Point Douglas, Washington Co., Minn.; and across the Mississippi, a very little higher up, is Hastings, seat of Dakota Co., Minn., at the mouth of Vermilion r. The above-mentioned dilation of the river into Lake St. Croix extends some 30 m. up from its mouth; and as far above this lake as an Indian ordinarily paddled his canoe in a day was the long-noted Sioux-Chippewa boundary, at a place which became known as Standing Cedars. Thus the river did duty in Indian politics before it set bounds to our Minnesota and Wisconsin. This lake was often called Lower St. Croix l., in distinction from the sizable body of water at the head of the river known as Upper St. Croix l. For the route thence by Burnt r. to Lake Superior, see a note beyond.