Chapter III (3)

[99] The Karankawa (Carancahua) were a tribe of Texan Indians whose habitat was the bays and river-openings of the coast south and west from Galveston. They were first known to Europeans through contact with La Salle's colonists, whose remnant they captured. In the eighteenth century the Spanish attempted several missions to this people, but without much success; their contact with whites appeared to have made them more sanguinary and ferocious, and increased their tendencies to cannibalism. Bad treatment by Lafitte's pirate colony made them hostile to the Austin settlers, who in 1825 rallied and inflicted upon them a severe defeat. They made part of the Mexican army in the attack on the Alamo, and after the conclusion of the war kept peace with the Texans through fear of the latter's revenge. Successive hostilities, however, weakened their strength and numbers, and after 1836 the few survivors took refuge in Mexico. There a remnant existed for some years, an attack upon them by some rancheros of Texas, in revenge for robbery, being noted as late as 1858. The tribe is now extinct, but a vocabulary and a knowledge of their manners and customs have been preserved. Consult Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, Harvard University, _Papers_ (Cambridge, 1891), i, no. 2.--ED.

[100] For the Comanche see our volume xvi, p. 233, note 109; also xviii, pp. 65-71; and xx, pp. 342-352. These "Arabs of the Plains" were first met by Louisiana colonists in 1699. They had already adopted the horse, and become skillful riders. On the borders of Mexican and American settlements, they alternately made depredations upon each, as suited their purposes. The frontiers of Texas were long harried by their raiding parties. It was not until 1875 that the last hostile band surrendered, and was settled on the Wichita reservation in Oklahoma, where they are still watched by troops stationed at Fort Sill. They are, however, becoming sedentary, most of their land now being allotted.--ED.

[101] For the Knistineaux (Cree) Indians see our volume ii, p. 168, note 75. Mackenzie is sketched in Franchère's _Narrative_, our volume vi, p. 185, note 4.--ED.

[102] Farnham here quotes from Z. M. Pike, _Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi River and through the Western Parts of Louisiana_ (Baltimore, 1810). See Coues's edition (New York, 1895), pp. 348-350. Our author has not noted the more detailed boundary arranged by the treaty (1825) at Prairie du Chien, under the supervision of William Clark and Lewis Cass, with Sioux, Chippewa, Sauk and Foxes, Iowa, etc.; this stood for years as the standard limit for the Sioux tribe.

Rivière de Corbeau was the present Crow Wing River, in upper Minnesota. Rising in Hubbard County, flowing through Wadena, and forming the boundary between Cass, Todd, and Morrison counties, it enters the Mississippi opposite the town of Crow Wing. By means of this river, there was reached a famous portage to Red River of the North; its affluent Leaf River was followed to a carrying trail leading over to Otter Tail Lake, one of the sources of the Red.

For the St. Peter's see our volume xxii, p. 342, note 315.--ED.

[103] Rum River was so designated by Carver in 1767, and is the river which Father Louis Hennepin nearly a hundred years earlier designated River St. Francis. It is the outlet of Mille Lacs, flows south and south-east, and unites with the Mississippi at Anoka.--ED.

[104] Farnham's classification of the Dakota bands is quite correct; see our volume xxii, pp. 278, 305, 326, notes 235, 263, 287. He follows Pike in his spelling of several of the tribal names, and Lewis and Clark in naming the Teton bands.

For the location of the Arikara villages see our volume v, p. 127, note 83.--ED.

[105] For wild rice, called by the French _folle avoine_ (Latin equivalent, _avena fatua_) see Franchère's _Narrative_, our volume vi, p. 384, note 205, and reference therein cited.--ED.

[106] For Jonathan Carver see J. Long's _Voyages_, in our volume ii, p. 30, note 5. Recent investigation throws much doubt upon the authenticity of Carver's work, although it is probable that he made the journey up St. Peter's River; see Wisconsin Historical Society, _Bulletin of Information_, no. 24 (January, 1905); also _American Historical Review_, xi, pp. 287-302.--ED.

[107] For the Assiniboin, and their revolt from the Sioux, see Maximilian's _Travels_, in our volume xxii, p. 370, note 346.--ED.

[108] The Chippewayan and Chippewa belong to two distinct Indian families. The former are of Athabascan (or Tinneh) stock, and range from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, and from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic. The Chippewa (Ojibwa, Saulteurs, see our volume ii, p. 79, note 38) are the largest and most important branch of the Algonquian family, first being encountered by the French at the outlet of Lake Superior. According to tradition, their original habitat was the St. Lawrence, whence they passed slowly westward to the Great Lakes. At Lake Superior they divided, one portion going north and west to Lake Winnipeg, the other following the southern shore of the lake. For many years their chief settlement was at La Pointe on Chequamegon Bay. As allies of the French they joined in the French and Indian War and in Pontiac's Conspiracy--see J. Bain (ed.), _Alexander Henry's Travels_ (Boston, 1901), pp. 79-106. They also aided the English in the American Revolution and the War of 1812-15. In the eighteenth century they drove the Sioux from the upper waters of the Mississippi, and the band known as Pillagers established themselves on Leach Lake. For the boundary between them and the Sioux see _ante_, p. 152, note 98. See _Minnesota Historical Collections_, v, for complete history of this tribe. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, there are still about twenty thousand of these people, besides a large number in Canada.--ED.

[109] Tripe de roche, for which see our volume ii, p. 156, note 70.--ED.

[110] Consult W. J. Hoffman, "The Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa," in Bureau of Ethnology _Report_, 1885-86, pp. 143-300.--ED.