encircled by the river, one of its north branches called the republican fork, (that falls in a few hundred paces above the village) and a small creek that flows into the north branch. On the N. and S. W. it is overlooked by a chain of lofty naked hills which give a romantic effect to the scene. The village contains 125 houses in lodges generally about 60 feet long and 25 wide, constructed of stout poles or saplines, arranged in form of an arbor, and covered with skins, bark and mats, they are in general neat, commodious and comfortable. The village is built without much regard to order, there are no regular streets or avenues, the lodges are placed pretty compactly together in crooked rows allowing barely room to pass between them. The avenues between the rows are kept in tolerable decent order, and the village is on the whole rather neat and cleanly than otherwise. The Kansas river is about one hundred yards broad at the village and is I believe always navigable for keel boats as high as the village. Its mouth is 30 miles above Fort Osage. It is a gentle stream, and waters a fine tract of country. The territory claimed by this tribe, is bounded by the Missouri on the north and north east, north by a line from the mouth of the Naddoway; south by the Tabo [Tabeau], and west as far as their fears of the Pawnee of Red river, Paducas and Hietans will suffer them to go from year to year."

The language of the Kansas and Osage is so nearly the same that the difference is scarcely describable; manners but little different. The tribe contained "about 250 fighting men with a good proportion of women and children." The narrator arrived at the Kansas village May 19; left on the 22d for the Pawnee Republican village to make peace between the two tribes; traveled "N. 43° W. about 120 miles" to the Pawnee village, arriving on the 28th. "This village is seated in a beautiful level prairie on the north bank of the Wolf branch of the Platte, about an hundred miles above its mouth. It contains at pres

ent but 170 houses which are built in a conical form of strong beams and poles, mats, straw, &c., and covered eighteen inches thick with clay and neatly sodded over, they are generally about eighty feet in circumference at the base, and the floors are sunk two feet below the surface of the ground. These houses are strong and very durable, commodious and comfortable, the best of them are well furnished with clean, neat mats, skins &c. and are ornamented with curtains of wicker work in front of their beds. There is not the least regularity in arranging the houses, no rows, streets or avenues, but they are far enough apart. This village is inhabited by three tribes of Pawnees, two of which formerly dwelt on the north branch of the Kansas river [Republican] about 60 miles in a direct course N. N. W. of the Kansas village, but the successive incursions of the Kansas, obliged them to abandon their old towns about two years ago; and move to their present residence. These three tribes are united under the authority of the celebrated chief Cheritarish [also Che ri ta rish] and seem to live together in the most perfect harmony, many families who have lived with their relations and friends since their removal; are just beginning to build for themselves. The chief told me that when the town is completed it will be nearly double its present size. About ten miles higher up the river is the village of the Pawnee-Loos or Wolf Pawnees, or as they call themselves Skee-neys. I did not visit this village. It is represented to be considerably smaller than the other village is at present.

"There appears to be a good understanding between the two towns. The four tribes who live in these two villages, may be safely computed I think to contain upwards of 1000 fighting men with a very large proportion of women and children.

"There are several branches of the same stock living on some of the waters of Red River, about 1000 miles

above Natchitoches and there is another tribe of them high up the Missouri by the name of Rickarees.

"The Pawnees seem to be a sober good kind of people; the men are not so stout as the Osages and Kansas, nor so active and enterprising though they are handsome and well formed: the women are ugly and filthy, but very ingenious and industrious. They maintain a continual warfare with the Hietans from whom they rob and steal an incredible number of mules and horses. They sometimes penetrate to the settlements of St. a Fe. The Loos particularly who committed such serious depredations there, 6 or 8 years ago as induced the governor of that province to send a strong detachment of mounted militia to awe them to better conduct.

"This detachment had but just departed from the Pawnees when Lt. Pike and his party arrived there in 1806. I had frequent conversations with the old chief, who is certainly a man of very good sense, and far superior in point of talents, to any Indian chief of my acquaintance; from his own account, it would seem that he is much courted by the governor of St. a Fe. He showed me all his papers, medals, flags, &c., of which he has no small quantity. They are all Spanish, except one flag given him by Pike. I was not a little astonished to find among them, letters dated 1807 from the Governor of St. a Fee, and Baton Rouge, expressive of their satisfaction of his loyalty and adherence to the Spanish government. These letters were accompanied by flags and medals: under the same date is a letter from the governor of St. a Fe to White Hair, late chief of the big Osages in the same style which from some accident was never delivered. I was informed by the old chief that these letters from St. a Fe were brought him by an old Frenchman well known in St. Louis by the name of "Monitou" who appears to have engaged himself very industriously in keeping up a correspondence between the Pawnees and

Osages and the Spanish government; since the cession of Louisiana.

(Concluded in the issue of May 23.)

The writer visited the Little Osage camp on the Arkansas, about 75 miles south and 16 east from the Pawnee. It took him from June 4 to the 11th to make the journey. These Osage had killed more than 200 buffaloes within a few days, so their visitors "had abundance of fine fat beef."

"The grand Saline is situated about 280 miles south west of Fort Osage between two forks of a small branch of the Arkansas, one of which washes its southern extremity and the other (the principal one) runs nearly parallel with and within a mile of its opposite side. It is a hard level plain of redish colored sand of an irregular or mixed figure, its greatest length is from north west to south east, & its circumference fall [full] thirty miles, from the appearance of drift wood that is scattered over its surface, it would seem that the whole plain is sometimes inundated by the overflowing of the streams that pass near it. This plain is entirely covered in dry hot weather from 2 to 6 inches deep with a crust of beautiful clean white salt of a quality rather superior to the imported blown salt, in this state it bears a very striking resemblance to a field of brilliant white snow with a crust on it after a rain.

The "rock saline" was about "S. 4° W. fifty miles" from the Little Osage camp. After a long spell of hot weather this section is covered with a solid rock of salt, 5 to 12 inches thick. At one of the four springs the writer hewed out with his tomahawk a block 16 inches thick. There was gypsum also in the same place.

In the year 1901 a monument was erected under the auspices of the Kansas State Historical Society near the junction of White Rock Creek and the Republican River, a point agreed upon as within the site of the Pawnee village at which Captain Zebulon M. Pike and his command sojourned in October, 1806, on the expedition "To the sources of the Arkansas, &c." The

monument stands on the northeast quarter of section 3, township 2 south, range 5 west, Republic county, Kansas, about six miles south of the Nebraska boundary line.

The writer of the foregoing descriptive article said that he traveled seventy-five miles from the Pawnee village on the Republican to the Osage camp on the Arkansas, which he says was sixteen miles farther east than the Pawnee village. It is about 150 miles in a direct line to such a point. The general reliability of this writer's statements will at least strengthen doubt of the propriety of placing historic monuments on sites without properly proving their right to them. For example, the extent and location of so-called Quivira will never be surely known, and I cannot conceive that the question as to how far north or northeast Coronado came can ever be satisfactorily settled. Fortunately, it does not much matter. Perhaps the Pike-Pawnee monument is in the proper place. However, if Nebraska has been too backward in claims of this sort, Kansas has been bold enough for both.

The Hietans are here probably the same as the "Cumancias" or Comanche. According to Long, at the time of his expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1820, they were wandering hordes called also Cumancias, and Nuttall says in his journal that the Salt Fork of the Arkansas, which runs north of and nearly parallel with the Cimarron, was the hunting boundary between the Pawnee and the Hietans. He found the water of this river "impotably Saline."

This sketch of the great salt region is remarkably truthful. The wells at Hutchinson, Reno county, Kas., in the center of the productive part of it, yield about 6,000 barrels daily. It comprises Kingman and Harper counties, directly south of Reno and reaching to the Oklahoma line, and Rice and Ellsworth counties, directly north. The vast deposits are mined as rock salt in Kingman and Harper counties; in the other counties named, by the brine method. The Morton Salt Company has a large interest in the Hutchinson wells. In southwestern Kansas there are surface incrustations and beds of salt from a few inches to two feet thick. This salt-bearing section extends southward forming the big salt plain of Woodward county, Okla., from half a mile to two miles wide and extending eight miles along the Cimarron. It is covered with snow-white crystals of salt, and salt springs. The system includes a great salt plain on the Cimarron, near the Kansas boundary, the Salt Creek plain in Blaine county and one on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas. There are beds of asphaltum in the center of the state, south of the Ca

4 Early Western Travels, XII, 272, XVI, 122; Handbook of American Indians, pt. 1, 327.