Note III'-11 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: THROUGH TEXAS TO NATCHITOCHES ON THE RED RIVER OF LOUISIANA, JUNE 1ST-JULY 1ST, 1807.

This Red r. or Rio Colorado requires attention to discriminate it from several others of the same name; they are all great streams, not to be confounded, in spite of their homonymity: 1. Red r. of the North, flowing into British America between North Dakota and Minnesota: see Part I., passim. 2. Red r., the uppermost and smallest one of three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called. This was oftenest called Negracka r., but is now usually known as the Salt fork of the Arkansaw: see note10, p. 552. 3. Red r., the middle one of three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called, now known as the Cimarron r.: see note10, p. 553. 4. Red r., the lowest and largest of the three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called; it is the main fork of the Arkansaw, often known as the Red r. of Arkansas, oftenest now as the Canadian r.: see note17, p. 558. 5. The Red r. of Louisiana, the Red r. of Natchitoches, the Red r. of the Mississippi—the Red r. of Pike's Expedition, which he never found. This is the first (lowest) great branch of the Mississippi from the W., and the one now most commonly known as the Red r., without any qualifying phrase, probably never called Colorado r. One of its Indian names is Kecheahquehono, to be found on some maps. 6. The Red r. of Texas, the one Pike crosses this 16th of June near Bastrop, and which flows into the Gulf of Mexico at Matagorda, between the Guadalupe and the Brazos rivers. This is also the Rio Roxo or Rojo, and the Rio Colorado, of the Spanish, sometimes qualified as Rio Colorado del Este, or Colorado r. of the East (though it is the southernmost of the lot), to distinguish it from: 7. Red r. of the West; Rio Colorado del Occidente; Colorado r. of the West, flowing into the Gulf of California. This has seldom been called Red r., and is always now known as the Colorado, without qualifying terms, as we very early adopted the Spanish name. We hear of cowboys who "paint the town red" in carrying their jags, but that is nothing to the way these rivers have rubricated maps. Easy alliteration of the words "red" and "river" has doubtless tended to spread the phrase, in the lack of nomenclatural resources, and in ignorance of the connections of several of these rivers.