Note I-53 — 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.

Pike does not mean that the Arkansaw r. itself is otherwise called White r., but the waters of the Arkansaw River basin he has reached are those of a river called the White, which is perfectly true. He elsewhere calls this Grand r. He also discusses whether this White r. be a tributary of the Arkansaw or of the Mississippi, and comes to the latter erroneous conclusion. This White or Grand r. of Pike is the Neosho; a large stream which waters much of southeastern Kansas, leaves the State in Cherokee Co., enters Indian Territory, and falls into the Arkansaw on the boundary between the Cherokees' and the Creeks' country. Its general course is S. E., then S. Pike lays it down pretty well on his map, by the name of Grand r., and I find it so charted on various modern maps. Pike runs it into the Arkansaw all right, and makes its Cottonwood fork the main stream, out of all proportion to the little creek he traces for the other fork; but there is not much difference in the two streams, which unite in Lyon Co. some 8 m. below Emporia. From the vicinity of Xenia, in Bourbon Co., Pike has to-day continued about W., by or near the station Bayard of the Mo., Kas., and Tex. R. R., in Allen Co. Having thus headed all Osage (Missourian) waters, he strikes and crosses the divide, and camps on the head of a small tributary of Elm cr., a branch of the Neosho (Arkansan waters). I suppose his camp to be at a point about equidistant from Bayard and two other places called respectively La Harpe and Wise—perhaps rather Bayard, La Harpe, and Morantown.