trenchments and charcoal mound were not made by Europeans.

De Soto, marching north across Alabama, reached a river which he crossed in boats that he built, in December, 1540. He took possession of the little Indian town Chicaca, and went into winter-quarters. The Indians made a sudden night attack, set fire to the town, and the surprised Spaniards lost everything. De Soto gathered all the fragments of metal from the ashes, moved to another town half a league off, and there tempered the sword blades and made new lances, saddles, and implements. Herrera says, De Soto fortified this

camp of refuge.

This Chicaca has been generally supposed to have been in the northern part of the present State of Mississippi. But it may be that the works two miles below Savannah mark its site, while the group on the edge of the town of Savannah, including the charcoal mound, may indicate the place where De Soto repaired his

armament.

NOTES.

A. "Native silver

hammered into leaf, and The silver

wrapped around small copper ornaments. coated copper bosses, found by Dr. Hildreth at the bottom of one of the Marietta mounds, and now in the college museum at Marietta, have occasioned much perplexity. Squire says, in the appendix to his "Aboriginal Monuments of New York:""These articles have been critically examined, and it is beyond doubt that the copper bosses are absolutely plated, not simply overlaid, with silver. Between the copper and the silver exists a connection, such as, it seems to me, could only be produced by heat; and if it is admitted that these are genuine remains of the mound-builders, it must at the same time be admitted that they possessed the difficult art of plating one metal on another.”

This inference may not be necessary. It may be that the two metals were found naturally joined, and the compound fragments were simply hammered into shape. Mr. Cyrus Mendenhall, who spent many years on the shores of Lake Superior, tells me that bits of native silver are sometimes found joined with the copper as if welded to it; and that the miners sometimes hammer out from such fragments rings that have all the appearance of copper rings plated with silver.

B. Withdrawal of the Natchez to Louisiana. p. 77. Notwithstanding the amount of speculation upon the flight of the Natchez to Louisiana, the locality of their retreat has not been fixed and determined. And yet it seems susceptible of identification. Du Pratz says the French "went up the Red River, then

the Black River, and from thence up the Bayouc d'Argent, which communicates with a small lake at no great distance from the fort which the Natchez had built."

Now, Mr. Dunbar, in his account of an exploration of Black River and its confluents, communicated by President Jefferson to Congress, along with the report of Lewis and Clark's expedition, says the Tensas, one of the confluents of the Black, “communicates with the Mississippi lowlands by the intervention of other creeks and lakes, and by one in particular, called Bayou d'Argent, which empties into the Mississippi about fourteen miles above Natchez. A large lake, called St. John's Lake, occu

pies a considerable part of the passage between the Mississippi and the Tensas, and has at some former period been the bed of the Mississippi."

This bayou and lake can be seen on the maps of Louisiana, between the parishes of Concordia and Tensas, and agree with the locality inscribed "Natchez destroyed" on Du Pratz's map.

The fort constructed here by the Natchez was undoubtedly a palisade. Charlevoix simply says they fortified themselves. Du Pratz says they built a fort. Dumont says, "they built a fort upon the model of the one from which they had been driven". and that was a palisade. Dumont further says, "the troops pillaged the fort and set fire to it."

The Natchez were not actually exterminated. A band of them, escaping, crossed the country to the Red River and attacked the French fort at Natchitoches. Charlevoix says that here "they intrenched themselves." Dumont says they threw up an intrenchment—“creuserent dans la plaine une espèce de retranchement où ils se fortifierent." So far for contemporary authority. But Mr. John Sibley, in a letter concerning the Southern Indians, dated Natchitoches, April 5, 1805, and which letter was annexed to Jefferson's message already mentioned, says: "After the massacre of the French inhabitants of Natchez, by the Natchez Indians,

in 1728, these Indians fled from the French, after being reinforced, and came up Red River, and camped about six miles below the town of Natchitoches, near the river, by the side of a small lake of clear water, and erected a mound of considerable size, where it now remains "

This statement is, I believe, the source of all the statements in the books that the Natchez, on their flight into Louisiana, built mounds.

66

C. The Mandan Language. p. 78. Lewis and Clark spent a winter with the Mandans, and Capt. Lewis' official report to the president says they speak "a primitive language, with some words resembling the Osages'." Prince Maximilian, of Wied, who spent some months among the Mandans, in 1833, says they speak a distinct language, differing radically from the Rickarees and Minnetarees.