Magazine of Western History.

VOL. I.

FEBRUARY, 1885.

No. 4

NOTES AND CRITICISMS ON UNSETTLED POINTS IN EARLY WESTERN HISTORY,

A SERIES OF PAPERS CONTRIBUTED BY VARIOUS WRITERS, EDITED BY OSCAR W. COLLET OF ST. LOUIS.

Rien n'est beau que le vrai: le vrai seul est aimable.

-[Boileau.

INTRODUCTION.

The cession of Louisiana to the United States in 1804 may be said to close the first epoch of the historic career of the Mississippi Valley. Beginning with the Marquette-Joliet discovery in 1673, it extends over one hundred and thirty years. Of a historic period so recent that men now living have heard many of its stories and traditions from the lips of their grandfathers, and so short that the grandfathers of those grandfathers might have been familiar with its earliest traditions, it is a matter of wonder that there should be doubts on questions of interest. Yet the critical student ever and anon finds obscurity where all should be plain, and conflict where all should be harmony. A people who are careless to ascertain and preserve their past infantile history discover a lack of intellectual

enterprise, and of national pride and self-respect not to be commended. Such indifference should escape censure only in savages.

Of the early discoverers and explorers, and of all those who by superior enterprise, or daring, or skill rendered conspicuous service in the early .times, too little is known. In the meagre accounts that we have much is obscure, much is incompletely and some is inaccurately stated; gaps reaching across periods of unusual interest, and sometimes of peril, are found; phenomena having evident historic significance, but of which the significance is unexplained, remain to puzzle instead of to inform; and, doubtless, to some historic personages of the epoch praise and censure are appropriated ignorantly, and hence unjustly. Every day the evidences by which some, at least, of these errors may be corrected are diminshed, and occasionally, too, new documents are found. The editor of this series of papers a gentleman qualified by his learning, by his addiction to local history and by his zeal and penetration in the quest of truth-undertakes, as far as may be, to gather up and preserve whatever fragments may be within reach. The function he assigns himself is chiefly that of editor. Students of local history will be found all over the country, from Chicago to New Orleans, and from Boston to San Francisco, each of whom in his historic rambles has stumbled upon some nugget of truth. Mr. Collet's ambition is to make of these a historic museum that will be valuable. this end he desires and requests contributions from all qualified persons in the United States, bearing on the first historic epoch of the Mississippi Valley.

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Let it be remembered, too, that archæology is distinctly a part of history. It would be a craven spirit that would refuse a place to prehistoric records in the forms, sometimes quaint, ingenious and attractive, sometimes coarse, brutish and repulsive, but always significant and instructive, of archæological remains. Mr. Collet's archæclogical learning fits him for this department of his editorial duty.

The title of the series is purposely made indefinite. The task which the editor proposes is chiefly to collect contributions and documents, which,' together with his own papers, will form the present series. The writings.