Note I-40 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: UP THE MISSOURI AND OSAGE RIVERS, AND THROUGH KANSAS TO THE PAWNEE VILLAGE ON THE REPUBLICAN RIVER, JULY 15TH-SEPT. 30TH, 1806.

Several points require attention in this long course, whatever its actual length may have been. 1. Passing Osceola in the forenoon, Pike reaches his "Grand Fork," i. e., the confluence of Sac r. with the Osage, at noon. This is clear, and the distance seems about right from the place where I set his camp of the 15th. But the streams he charts on this course, below the forks, are not more easily disposed of than was the "East" r. 2. Thus, on the same side as "East" r., about halfway from this to the forks, he lays down two small streams from the W., the lower of which he names Light cr. There are in fact several such; and it may be reasonable to assume that by Light cr. Pike means the largest of them. This is the one now called Gallinipper cr., which falls in a mile below Osceola, and which is now meandered for a few miles by both the Kansas City, Clinton, and Springfield R. R., and the Kas. Cy. and Southern R. R. 3. After rounding the bend above described, and passing the Bear cr. there said, Pike passes two creeks on his left, from the S., one of which he charts by the name of Lime r. This probably answers to the stream now called Wablo, or Weablo, or Weaubleau cr. The other one of the two is Brushy cr. But the identification of Lime r. with Weaubleau cr., and of Light with Gallinipper, throws both out of relative position, and introduces a difficulty which can only be done away with by supposing an error of the map. 4. Osceola is the seat of St. Clair Co., on the left hand going up river, 3 or 4 m. below the mouth of Sac r. This village is notable as a point up to which steamboats used to come, especially during our Civil War; it was burned in Sept., 1861, by "Jim" Lane (James Henry Lane, b. Lawrenceburg, Ind., June 22d, 1814, committed suicide at Leavenworth, Kas., July, 1866); pop. lately 331. 5. Two of the little crosses which usually mark Pike's camps are superfluous for the 14th-16th. One I cannot account for; the other evidently marks the spot where Bel Oiseau was killed, as there is the legend "Beloiseau Kill'd." Pike usually calls him Belle Oiseau; but the French noun is of the same gender as the Indian himself. He was also known as Beautiful Bird. 6. The Sac is about as large as the Osage at their confluence; it runs on an average due N. course from Lawrence, through Dade and Cedar, into St. Clair Co. We are told by the old pioneer "Jack" Beard that the river was so called because a party of Sacs (probably of the Missouri River band) camped on it about 1820; in the fall of 1861 Sterling Price's rebel army were on this river for several weeks. 7. Camp is set on the left bank or right hand of the Osage, above Salt cr., right, and just below the mouth of the stream from the N. called Mine r. in the text, but lettered "Mire Cr." on the map. This is the Little Monegan, Monegau, or Monegaw cr.; the place called Monegaw Springs is in the vicinity. (The name may be preferably Monega, Osage word for "wolf.")