Note VII-15 — Chapter VII · GEOGRAPHY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.[VII-1]

Pike's phrase "Le Mille Lac" brings up an orthographic case unique in some respects. No Minnesota lake is better known than this one; but what shall we call it? Shall we say Mille Lac, and then call the county in which it is partly situated Mille Lacs, as the G. L. O. map of 1887 does? Is the single body of water Le Mille Lac, as Pike says, or Les Mille Lacs? Is this one lake of a thousand, or a thousand lakes in one? Nobody seems to know; hence a crop of phrases, e. g., Mille Lac, Mille Lacs, Milles Lac, Milles Lacs; also, Mille Lac Lake, Lake Mille Lac, Lake Mille Lacs, Mille Lacs Lake; item, Mil Lac, Mill Lake, and other vagaries too many and too trivial to cite, all of which the student of Minnesota geography will discover sooner or later. The phrase being French, we naturally turn to see what a pure French scholar who was also a great geographer has to say on the subject. Speaking of the Sioux having their principal hunting-camps on Leech l. and on "Minsi-sagaigon-ing, or Mille Lacs," Nicollet explains in a note, Rep. 1843, p. 66: "This name is derived from minsi, all sorts, or everywhere, etc.; sagaigon, lake; and ing, which is a termination used to indicate a place; so the meaning of the word is 'place where there are all sorts of lakes,' which the French have rendered into Mille Lacs." Whence it appears that Mille Lacs is short for some such phrase as le pays aux mille lacs, l'entourage des mille lacs, the country full of lakes, the environment of a thousand lakes, etc. Now it so happens geographically that this one lake among the thousand is vastly larger than any of the rest, perhaps than all the rest put together; it is par excellence le lac des mille lacs, the one among a thousand; furthermore, that it was a Sioux rendezvous, which became known as Mille Lacs by a sort of unconscious figure of speech on the part of those who very likely never heard of the rhetorical trope synecdoche, but called a part by the name of the whole, to suit themselves. I imagine, therefore, that the seeming solecism of a plural phrase for a singular thing is logically correct; that Nicollet was right in writing Mille Lacs; that Lac Mille Lacs would be grammatically defensible, though inelegant; and that we could say in English Lake Mille Lacs, or Lake Thousand-lakes, with equal propriety, though we should avoid such forms as Lake Mille Lac, or Mille Lac lake. In fine, the phrase Mille Lacs has ceased to concern any question of grammatical number, and become a mere name of two words. As for the pleonasm or tautology of such phrases as Lac Mille Lacs, or Lake Mille Lacs, etc., this need not disturb us as long as we continue to talk of "Mississippi river," for example, as that means "Misi River river." There are several earlier names of this remarkable body of water. The memoir of Le Sieur Daniel Greysolon Du Luth on the discovery of the country of the Nadouecioux, addressed in 1685 to Monseigneur Le Marquis de Seignelay, as translated from the original in the archives of the Ministry of the Marine, has this passage, as given, e. g., in Shea's Hennep., 1880, p. 375: "On the 2nd of July, 1679, I had the honor to plant his Majesty's arms in the great village of the Nadouecioux, called Izatys, where never had a Frenchman been, no more than at the Songaskitons and Huetbatons," etc. De or Du Luth, Lhut, Lhu, Lut, Lud, whatever the trader's name was, had come from Montreal (Sept. 1st, 1678) with six or eight men to this part of Canada and was in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie on Apr. 5th, 1679, under the patronage of Comte Louis de Buade de Frontenac, who had succeeded De Courcelle as governor of Canada Apr. 9th, 1672; consequently he named the lake Lac de Buade or Lac Buade; this was its original denomination in French, and such name appears on many old maps, e. g., Hennepin's, 1683, Franquelin's, 1688, De L'Isle's, 1703, etc., some of which also mark a place by the name of Kathio, supposed to be the site of a large Sioux village, on the W. side of L. de Buade, near the base of the peninsula later known as Cormorant Point. Du Luth's Izatys were Gens des Mille Lacs, i. e., Sioux who lived about Lake Mille Lacs in the country of that "number of small lakes called the Thousand Lakes," as Carver phrases it; they were the Issati or Islati, Issaqui, Issanti, Issanati, Issanoti, Issayati, etc., meaning those who lived in lodges on sharp stones, i. e., Knife Indians, at one of the Mille Lacs called Lake Isan or Knife l. However loosely Du Luth's term Izatys may have come to be used, it designated and most properly designates the genuine original Gens du Lac, or People of Lake Thousand-lakes, our modern Mdewakontonwans. Du Luth's Houetbatons are supposed to be our Wakpatons, Warpetonwans, or Waqpatonwans; his Songaskitons, our Sisitonwans, Seseetwawns or Sissetons, i. e., lake-dwellers (sisi, marsh or lake, tonwan, people); these two tribes are located on old maps eastward of Lake Mille Lacs. In 1689, date of Pierre Lesueur's and Nicholas Perrot's visit to Sioux dominions, we hear that N. E. of the Mississippi lived the Menchokatonx or Mendesuacantons, i. e., the same Sioux as Du Luth's Izatys of Lac Buade. According to E. D. Neill, Macalester Coll. Cont. No. 10, in 1697 Aubert de la Chesnaye said that "at the lake of the Issaqui, also called Lake Buade, are villages of the Sioux called Issaqui; and beyond this lake are the Oetbatons; further off are the Anitons who are also Cioux." Neill also cites a certain doc., dated Quebec, 1710, which states that "the three bands with which we are acquainted are the Tintons, the Songasquitons, and the Ouadebaetons." Two of these are obviously the same as two of Du Luth's; the third (Tintons) are the same as the Izatys, or rather a band of Indians who came under this more general denomination. This connection is established in Hennepin, whose Tintonbas, Tintonhas, or Thinthonhas were Sioux who lived on the St. Francis (or Rum r., the main discharge of Lake Buade) near the Issantis, and were the Indians who captured his companions and himself. This dig at the roots of primitive Sioux ethnology is merely to bring up the next name of Lac Buade; for, from such intimate connection as this body of water had with certain Sioux, it immediately became known as Lac des Issatis, and soon as Lac des Sioux, or Sioux l.; moreover, St. Francis or Rum r., which runs out of the lake, became Sioux r.; e. g., Franquelin's map, 1688, marks "R. des François ou des Sioux." De L'Isle's map, 1703, letters the lake "Mississacaigan ou L. Buade," and the issuant river "R. de Mendeouacanion." The first of these two Indian names is the one which Nicollet adopts for the lake in the form Minsi Sagaigoning; the other is the same word as Mdewakantonwan. Nicollet's remark on this subject, like all his pregnant writing, requires attention here, especially as it raises a geographical besides a nomenclatural point, Rep. 1843, p. 67: "We still find some confusion on the maps as regards the name of Minsi-sagaigon-ing. Some have laid it down as Mille Lacs; others as Spirit lake; and on others, again, it appears as two lakes, with (separately) both names. The ambiguity arises from the fact that the same lake has been named by two nations. The one which I have adopted is from the Chippeways; that by which it is known to the Sioux is Mini-wakan—meaning literally, water spirit; but, in this case, intended to signify ardent spirits. The river that issues from this lake has been named Rum river by the traders; which appellation the Chippeways have translated into Ishkode-wabo, or ardent spirits; and the Sioux into Mdote-mini-wakan, or outlet of the ardent spirits." That is a dismal aboriginal pun which mixes up nature-spirits with the artificial product, turns the lake into a bottle, and the river into its neck; it is bad enough to have been perpetrated "next morning," and it is too bad that the debauches to which the traders allured the Indians should have been perpetuated in geographical nomenclature. Spirit l. is the name under which Long, for example, maps Lake Mille Lacs, and the Gens du Lac he calls People of Spirit Lake; and Schoolcraft, Narr. Journ. of 1820, pub. 1821, p. 214, has Great Spirit lake and Missisawgaiegon—the latter name also applied to its discharge (Rum r.). Spirit is not now a name of Lake Mille Lacs; the one for which Nicollet conserved the name Mini-wakan, and which hence became known as Spirit l. and Devil's l., is the large body of water in N. Dakota, tributary to the Red River of the North; Spirit l. of modern Minnesota geography is a little one of the collection in Aitkin Co., between Lower Red Cedar l. and Mille Lacs l. The latter is the second largest lacustrine body of water in the State. It is situated across the intercounty line between Aitkin and Mille Lacs, about half in one and half in the other of these two counties. Its figure is more regular than usual, being squarish, with three corners rounded off and the S. E. one drawn out a little; there is also some constriction about the middle, where points facing each other run out from the E. and W. shore respectively; the shore line is said to be about 100 miles in all. The lake is readily accessible, being only some 12 m. S. of Aitkin, and is a favorite resort for outings. One of the 14 present Ojibwa reservations is on its S. shore.