Chapter III (2)

[III'-10] Camp short of Bastrop, a comparatively old place on the Rio Colorado, located at the point where the Spanish trail crossed the river, about 35 m. below Austin, and present seat of the county of the same name. Bastrop is a mere village, pop. about 1,650, but the name was famous in the early annals of Texas, when the Baron Bastrop had his immense estate on the Washita. Dunbar and Hunter, in their well-known Observations, etc., which formed one of the tracts accompanying Jefferson's Message to Congress of Feb. 19th, 1806, inform us that the Baron's great grant of land from the Spanish government began near the Bayou Bartholomew, about 12 leagues above the post on the Washita, and consisted of a square 12 leagues on each side, or over a million French acres (London ed. 1807, p. 83). Bastrop seems to have been a prototype of the modern "cattle barons," or "cattle kings," as they are styled, who generally manage to cover more ground than Queen Dido did when she stretched a bull's-hide around her famous city.

[III'-11] 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 note 10, 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 note 10, 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 note 17, 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.

[III'-12] The "Tancards" of whom Pike speaks on the 16th and 17th, also called Tankahuas, Tonkawans, Tankaways, etc., were a remarkable people--a sort of Ishmaelites who roamed about, and seemed to belong nowhere in particular. Powell styles them a "colluvies gentium" or fusion of tribes; and what little we know of their local habitation is derived mainly from Dr. Sibley's notes, supplemented by the above passages in Pike's narrative. Dr. Sibley's historical letter to General Dearborn, dated Natchitoches, Apr. 5th, 1805, and first published with other tracts in Jefferson's Message to Congress of Feb. 19th, 1806, is one of the bases of the literature on this subject. "The Tankaways (or Tanks, as the French call them)," says Sibley, p. 45 of the London ed., 1807, "have no land, nor claim the exclusive right to any, nor have any particular place of abode, but are always moving, alternately occupying the country watered by the Trinity, Braces [Brazos], and Colerado, towards St. a Fé. Resemble, in their dress, the Cances [Kanzas] and Hietans [Comanches], but [are] all in one horde or tribe. Their number of men is estimated at about 200; are good hunters; kill buffaloe and deer with the bow; have the best breed of horses; are alternately friends and enemies of the Spaniards. An old trader lately informed me that he has received 5000 deer skins from them in one year, exclusive of tallow, rugs and tongues. They plant nothing, but live upon fruits and flesh: are strong, athletic people, and excellent horsemen." The history of the tribe dates back of Sibley and Pike nearly a century, if the first mention of these Bedouins of the Texan sands in 1719 be taken as its starting-point. In 1876 Gatschet had collected a vocabulary of about 300 words, upon which linguistic material he classed the people as a separate stock called Tonkawa, from the Caddoan or Wakoan word _tonkaweya_, implying that these Indians kept by themselves, aloof from other tribes. The Tonkawan family is recognized by Powell as one of the 58 distinct linguistic stocks he adopts in his classification; his map locates the tribe agreeably with the above indications, and his text adds: "About 1847 they were engaged as scouts in the United States Army, and from 1860-62 (?) were in the Indian Territory; after the secession war till 1884 they lived in temporary camps near Fort Griffin, Shackleford County, Texas, and in October, 1884, they removed to the Indian Territory (now on Oakland Reserve). In 1884 there were 78 individuals living; associated with them were 19 Lipan Apache" (Seventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., 1885-86, published 1891, p. 126). Two other Tonkawan tribes, the Mayes and Yakwal, are extinct or merged in the former; and several minor bands have been known by name.

[III'-13] The full style of this river was el Rio de los Brazos de Dios, River of the Arms of God, which seemed neither blasphemous nor sacrilegious to the admirable fanatics who so solemnly theographized geography in their excursions for the salvation of souls, ad majorem Dei gloriam. It is difficult for us to realize what a queer lot they were, with their "Monastery Road" to the "Opening of the Virgin," their Corpus Christi in one place and Sangre de Cristo elsewhere, Holy Ghost bay, Todos Santos collectively when they ran out of individual saints, and Rio Trinidad for the whole Trinity after the members of the divine family had been separately complimented. It is fortunate that we cannot commit the intellectual anachronism of putting ourselves in the place of these very sincere servants of a very moderate polytheism, though the result be that the Brazos is also called Brasses and Braces r., bringing up a ludicrous association of ideas with the buttons and suspenders which uphold our trousers, ad majorem pudorem virorum. Other names of this stream are Rivière Ste. Thérèse (or Rio Santa Teresa), and R. Maligne; thus the phrase "St. Théreseor or Maline R." appears on the map in Winterbotham's History, 1795. The river is the largest one of the series Pike is crossing; it drains a great area in Texas from the Llanos Estacados or Staked Plains to the Gulf, which it reaches between Galveston and Matagorda. The point at which the old Spanish trail struck it is indicated by Pike's mention of the Little Brazos, a sort of bayou or side-sluice which runs close to the E. side of the main stream for a great distance. The crossing was near the mouth of this bayou.

[III'-14] The streams passed to-day are tributaries of the Brazos, the larger one mentioned being that afterward known as Navasota r., which falls in a good way below, at or near a place which was once named Washington. The high land on the other side, on which was camp, represents some of the elevation which forms the water-shed between Brazos and Trinity rivers, and which is passed over next day. The clause of the text reading "impassable four miles. Overflows swamps, ponds, etc.," I suppose may be read "impassable for (some) miles (along its course, where it) overflows (in) swamps, ponds, etc."

[III'-15] The original Rio Trinidad has become better known under its equivalent English name of the Trinity, and there is a place lower down on it which is or was called Trinidad or Trinity (now Swartwout?). It empties into Galveston bay, and so into the Gulf. The Spanish trail from the crossing led on to a place called Crockett, in Houston Co., at or near which camp of the 21st was pitched. A little above the crossing, on the E. bank of the river, we are informed by Dr. Sibley, was the residence of the Keyes or Keychias, a Caddoan tribe which in 1805 mustered 60 men. These are now called Kichais, and now or lately consisted of about 60 persons.

[III'-16] For Nacogdoches see next note. The above lacuna in the text may be presumptively supplied from Pike's map, where the post is marked to that effect.

[III'-17] Natches and Neches are obviously the same Indian word, the root of which appears in Natchitoches and various other names. The two have run through the usual range of variation in spelling in the course of writing and printing; but of late years the form Natchez has become fixed as the name of the well-known city on the Mississippi below Vicksburg, while the designation of the river has perhaps acquired stability in the form of Neches. The latter is the principal stream between the Trinity and the Sabine; it runs south approximately parallel with both, and falls into the Gulf through Sabine l., as the Sabine does; in fact, it is collateral with the Sabine, and has been considered a branch of the latter. The Spanish trail crossed it high up. Its own main branch is that eastern one known as Rio Angelina or Angeline r., which Pike crosses on the 24th; and E. of a small branch of the latter was the site of Nacogdoches. It is now an obscure village, pop. about 1,200, seat of the county of its own name, which occupies a space between Angelina and Atoyac rivers; but the place is an old one, which, like all the others which the Spanish trail went through, has a long ethnic, civil, and military history. Neches or Natches r. is to be particularly noted as the ancient seat of a tribe of Indians who, though a mere handful a century ago, left their name as a legacy for all time. Sibley (_l. c._, p. 43) speaks of "a small river, a branch of the Sabine, called the Naches," on which lived the "Inies, or Tachies (called indifferently by both names)," and adds: "From the latter name the name of the province of Tachus or Taxus is derived," _i. e._, Texas. Among the permutations of the word and its derivatives not the least singular is the English adjective and noun _Texican_--a word obviously formed upon the model of _Mexican_ from _Mexico_. I suppose this is modern, and what may be termed cowboy dialect; I used to hear it constantly when I was in those parts.

[III'-18] 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.

[III'-19] The former office of the Sabine or Mexican r. in delimiting Spanish from American possessions continues to-day in so far as it represents the boundary between Texas and Louisiana. On crossing it, our fervid young patriot passed from the military protection of his Catholic Majesty to that of his Brother Jonathan and Uncle Sam--the former of these two, by the way, being as actual a person as King Charles IV. of Spain, and no other than Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut. The Spanish trail entered what is now the State of Louisiana at a point between Hamilton and Sabinetown, both of which were places on the Texan side of the river. The crossing was but little above Sabinetown, and between two small watercourses known as Bayou San Patricio and Bayou San Miguel, both running in Sabine Co., La. His camp of the 30th seems to have been between Bayou Miguel and the next below, now called Lennan; and these two I suppose to be the ones he lays down as running into the Sabine together, as they do, pretty nearly.

[III'-20] General Wilkinson's "marquee," the location of which Pike took pleasure in imagining, was the large tent used by field and general officers; the name is not often heard now, though the word is hardly obsolete. Old Fort Jesup was built directly on the continuation of the Spanish trail in Louisiana, rather less than half-way from the Sabine to Red r. A short distance S. of this was a place whose name appears on various maps as Many, Manny, Maney, and by accident Mary--the latter on Emory's, 1857-58, which I think is one of the most accurate and altogether useful maps ever drawn to a scale of 1 : 6,000,000. A glance at this shows Pike's trail from the Rio Grande to the Red r. in all its main features; and though many desirable details are necessarily lacking, not one is misleading.

[III'-21] This short clause brings up a number of interesting points. The hill is among the slight elevations which together form the water-shed between the Sabine and Red r. This rise of ground corresponds in a general way with the boundary between Sabine and Nachitoches cos. in Louisiana, parting the numberless and mostly unnamed small waters which make on either hand for their respective outlets in the two rivers. Pike is already on the Red River side, among the runs which discharge into the body of water known as the Spanish l., and which finds its way into Red r. by various channels. This is the place where "anciently stood," as he informs us, the village of the mysterious tribe of Indians he calls Adyes and Adayes. These have a long history; but the literature of the subject is mainly a presentation of our ignorance. Powell says that the first mention of them occurs in the Naufragios of Cabeça de Vaca, who calls them Atayos, about 1540, and that they are also noted by various early French explorers of the Mississippi, as d'Iberville and Joutel. The fortified camp of which Pike speaks was built in 1715 and known as the Mission of Adayes. From documents preserved in San Antonio de Bexar, examined by Mr. A. S. Gatschet in 1886, it appears that 14 Adai families emigrated to a place S. of that town in 1792; these were afterward lost sight of. According to Baudry de Lozieres, as cited by Powell, 100 Adaizans were left at home in 1802. Turning to Sibley (_l. c._ p. 42), we find that in 1805 there were 20 men and more women living "about 40 miles from Natchitoches, below the Yattassees [a tribe that lived on Bayou Pierre or Stony creek], on a lake called Lac Macdon, which communicated with the division of Red river that passes by Bayau Pierre. They live at or near where their ancestors have lived from time immemorial. They being the nearest nation to the old Spanish fort, or Mission of Adaize, that place was named after them, being about 20 miles from them, to the south." Dr. Sibley collected a vocabulary of about 250 words, the sole basis we have for the modern scientific classification of the tribe, upon the only sure principle of natural generation as indicated by mother-tongues. "Their language differs from all others," says Dr. Sibley, "and is so difficult to speak or understand, that no [other] nation can speak ten words of it: but they all speak Caddo, and most of them French." He adds that they were always attached to the latter, with whom they sided against the Natchez; and that after the Natchez massacre of 1798, while the Spanish occupied Fort Adaize, the priests took much pains in vain to make them believe what was told them about Catholic dogma. This is practically the sum of what is known of these evidently intelligent and manly people; the rest of the literature is mainly the conclusions reached upon the subject by various authors. The consensus of opinion very properly classifies the Adaize, Adaizi, Adaise, Adaes, Adees, Adayes, Adyes, Adahi, or Adai, as a distinct linguistic stock, lately called the Adaizan family, whose affinities, more or less remote, are with the Caddoan.

[III'-22] Natchitoches, or some other form of this word, was originally the name of a certain tribe of Indians of the Southern Caddoan family, and of the island on which they dwelt in Red r., at the site of the town which later arose there and is still so called. We hear of these people and their place very early in French colonial history. In Sept., 1688, Henri de Tonti was visited at his Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, by Couture, one of his men whom he had left at Arkansas Post in 1686, who apprized him of La Salle's tragic death. He set off (he says, in Oct., 1689--probably a wrong date from memory) in Dec., 1688, descended the Illinois and Miss. rivers to Red r., and went up this, reaching the Natchitoches Feb. 17th and the Caddodaquis Mar. 28th, 1689: so Parkman's La Salle, etc., p. 439. He was told that some of the assassins or those in the plot to murder their leader were at a village of the Naouadiches, some 85 leagues S. W., whither he went, but found no trace of Hiens and his confederates. After much suffering, including an illness at his Arkansas Post, he regained Fort St. Louis Sept., 1689: Wallace, Hist. Ill. and La., 1893, p. 188 _seq._ According to this authority the present town dates from Jan., 1717, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, governor of Louisiana under Crozat, sent a sergeant and some soldiers to establish a post on the island, which was commanded _ca._ 1721-28 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (b. Quebec, Sept. 18th, 1676, d. _post_ 1731). This notable character, uncle of D'Iberville's wife, Chevalier, etc., is the "Mons. St. Dennie" of Sibley's notice of the Natchitoches, p. 49, where it is said he was still in command after the Natchez massacre of 1728; "the Indians called him the Big Foot, were fond of him, for he was a brave man." According to Gayarré, Hist. La., II. p. 355, the foreign population of Natchitoches was 811 by a census made under Gov. O'Reilly, _ca._ 1769, or when the French had been in Louisiana 70 years. Sibley, writing at Natchitoches Apr. 5th, 1805, says that an elderly French gentleman then living had shortly before informed him that the informant remembered when the Natchitoches were 600 men strong: this should represent _ca._ 3,000 total souls.

[III'-23] Constant Freeman of Massachusetts had been a captain in the Revolutionary army when he was made major of the 1st Regiment of Artillerists and Engineers, Feb. 28th, 1795; promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of Artillerists, Apr. 1st, 1802; transferred to corps of Artillery, May 12th, 1814; and honorably discharged June 15th, 1815; he had been brevetted colonel July 10th, 1812, and he died Feb. 27th, 1824.

Elijah Strong of Connecticut was an ensign of the 1st sub-Legion Feb. 23d, 1793; lieutenant, July 1st, 1794; transferred to 1st Infantry, Nov. 1st, 1796; captain, Oct. 23d, 1799; major, 7th Infantry, Dec. 15th, 1808; and died June 9th, 1811.

Charles Wollstonecraft of England was appointed from Pennsylvania to be a lieutenant of the 2d Artillerists and Engineers, June 4th, 1798; he became a lieutenant of Artillerists, Apr. 1st, 1802; captain, Mar. 15th, 1805; was transferred to the corps of Artillery, May 12th, 1814; on the 15th of March, 1815, he was brevetted major for 10 years' faithful service in one grade, and Sept. 28th, 1817, he died.

Thomas A. Smith of Virginia was appointed from Georgia a second lieutenant of Artillerists, Dec. 15th, 1803; became first lieutenant, Dec. 31st, 1805, and captain of Rifles, May 3d, 1808; he was a brigadier general in 1814, resigned Nov. 10th, 1818, and died in a few weeks.

[III'-24] In the orig. ed. this weather diary occupied an unpaged leaf following p. 278 of the main text of Pt. 3, being thus pp. 279, 280. I leave it in the same relative position, and pass it without further remark.