Note III'-18 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: THROUGH TEXAS TO NATCHITOCHES ON THE RED RIVER OF LOUISIANA, JUNE 1ST-JULY 1ST, 1807.

Three lacunæ in this sentence, two of which I fill, omitting the other, which was a long dash in place of the Frenchman's name. We seem bound by Pike's map to supply "Toyac" as the missing name of the river he means, though there is certainly no such large river as he lays down between the Neches and the Sabine. The map is evidently at fault here, for he runs the Neches into Trinity r., and thus into Galveston bay, and his "Rio Toyac" comes nearer exhibiting the proper relations of the Neches with the Sabine. Exactly what his great "Rio Toyac" may pass for is thus questionable, but the "little river" of the text, which he crosses after leaving Nacogdoches, must be the present Atoyac r. (the branch of the Angelina which separates Nacogdoches Co. from San Augustin Co., for the most part). The route continues to-day past San Augustin, which was on the Spanish trail, and on or near another small branch of the Angelina, which runs between San Augustin Co. and Sabine Co. The place where he stopped on the 28th, only three hours' march from the Sabine, and where he found both Frenchmen and Americans, was evidently the exact locality of which Sibley speaks concerning certain Caddoan Indians known as Aliche, Eyeish, or Eyish. They were then on the verge of extinction, having been in 1801 reduced by the smallpox till only 25 of them were left in 1805. Writing in the latter year he says (l. c., p. 43) that "they were, some years ago, a considerable nation, and lived on a bayou which bears their name, which the road from Nachitoch to Nacogdoches crosses, about 12 miles west of Sabine r., on which a few French and American families are settled." These data fix Pike's camp with precision.