Note II-7 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: ST. PAUL TO LEECH LAKE, SEPTEMBER 22D, 1805-JANUARY 31ST, 1806.
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About 8 m., to Anoka, seat of that county, a logging town of 6,000 pop., at mouth of Rum r. Pike first passed Coon cr., right, and the most difficult rapids he went up are those named for the same intelligent and ablutionary quadruped, Procyon lotor. Coon or Racoon cr. was formerly known as Peterah cr. Wanyecha (now Elm) cr. falls in on the left, slightly below Rum r. The latter is a notable stream, being the main discharge of Mille Lacs, and as such having acquired a long history. Carver called it Rum r.: "in the little tour I made about the Falls [of St. A.], after traveling 14 m. by the side of the Mississippi, I came to a river nearly 20 yards wide which ran from the north east, called Rum River," he says, p. 45, ed. 1796. This was Nov. 19th, 1767, and the river has oftenest been so designated ever since. But here is a place where the involuntary exploration which the Sioux forced on Accault's party comes in, and the Hennepinian canonical calendar is obtruded as usual, making the following trouble:
"Eight leagues above St. Anthony of Padua's falls on the right, you find the river of the Issati or Nadoussiou [Sioux], with a very narrow mouth, which you can ascend to the north for about 70 leagues to Lake Buade or of the Issati [Mille Lacs] where it rises. We gave this river the name of St. Francis," Shea's Henp., tr. 1880, p. 201. In French the name was R. de St. François: so Henp., map, 1683; on Franquelin's, 1688, it is "Riviere des Francois ou des Sioux," which turns it over from the saint to the French nation, possibly less saintly on the whole—that is, unless Franquelin intended to cover St. Francis de Sales, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Francis de Paola, or unless des be a mis-engravement for de S. But Franquelin's earlier map, 1683 or 1684, has only R. des François, which is there connected with R. de la Madelaine (St. Croix r.) by R. du Portage, which latter stands for present Snake r., a branch of the St. Croix. De L'Isle's map, 1703, avoids any such question by turning the river entirely over to the Sioux; he letters R. de Mendeouacanion, i. e., Mdewakantonwan or Gens du Lac. A question affecting the identification of St. Francis with Rum came up in Carver's time, and is still mooted. Carver says, ed. cit. p. 45: "Reached the River St. Francis, near 60 miles above the Falls. To this river Father Hennipin gave the name," etc. He reached it Nov. 21st, 1687. This is the stream next above Rum r. on the same side, now best known as Elk r. But Pike's map letters "Leaf R. or St. Francis of Carver & Henepen"; Long has it St. Francis r.; even Nicollet gives Wichaniwa or St. Francis. Prof. N. H. Winchell remarks, Hist. Sketch Expl. and Surv. Minn., 4to, p. 15: "On modern maps the name of St. Francis is applied to the next stream above the Rum, and that may have been the river to which Hennepin referred in his journal, since by a portage the route by it to lake Buade is much less than the course by the Rum river, and the Indians may have followed that route." I quite agree with my friend the professor that the Sioux who took charge of Hennepin's "explorations," in spite of all the saints on the calendar, may have brought him that way from Mille Lacs to the Mississippi; but the question is not by what river he came; the question is, Which river did he call R. de St. François and map by this name? To me Hennepin makes it perfectly clear that he meant Rum r. Thus he fixes it 8 leagues = 23⅓ m. above the falls, which is much closer to the actual position of Rum r. than such a befogged geographer often comes; item, he makes his St. François r. come from Mille Lacs, as Rum r. does and the other one does not (at least not uninterruptedly); item, his alternative names, r. of the Issati or Nadoussiou, point directly to Rum r.; item, for a clincher, Hennepin's map letters R. de St. François precisely along the whole course of Rum r. from the Mississippi to Lac Buade, and traces the other river too, without any name. You seldom find a case clearer than this seems to me to be. Carver was simply mistaken in identifying Hennepin's St. Francis with the other river instead of with his own Rum r.; and this malidentification on Carver's part seems to have given later writers an unconscious bias in the wrong direction; Pike makes the same mistake further on in this book. The strongest counter-argument to my view is that I differ with Nicollet in this case. It is always unsafe to disagree with that model of caution and precision; but I must venture to do so in this instance. For the rest, add to the synonyms of Rum r. the aboriginal name Iskode Wabo, as given by Nicollet, and the variants of this phrase; also, R. de l'Eau de Vie of Pike; also, Missayguani-sibi and Brandy r. of Beltrami. F. eau de vie is obviously the explanation of the "Audevies Cr." of Lewis and Clark's map, 1814, though the stream thus designated looks to my eye too low down for Rum r. The source of this river is noted beyond, where the case of Mille Lacs comes up.