in great fear.[1] The pursuers passed over a hard, stony and frozen "sea," and came to the land of fir trees, which they called "Shinaki."
After the lapse of an indefinite time, during which they remained in the land of firs and came into hostile contact with several of the surrounding people, among whom are Chiconapi, Makatopi, Akonapi and Assinapi, they passed "over a hollow mountain" and found food in the plains of the buffalo land, along a yellow river, where they built towns and raised corn, and remained for a long time, under a number of different chiefs.
Becoming dissatisfied, they "longed for the rich east-land," and on moving in that direction they came into conflict with the Tallegewi. "The Talamatan and the Nitilowan all go united" (to the war); and fell upon and slew great numbers of the Tallegewi. Sometimes they were repulsed by the Tallegewi, but finally all their towns were captured and they fled to the south, and the Talamatan (Hurons?) settled north of the lakes, the Lenape on the south side, i. e., in the land of the Tallegewi.
The rest of the chronicle pertains to later movements in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and their early dealings with the English.
According to both these renditions, all those events preceding the crossing of the Mississippi may have taken place, and probably did, in the region extending from the Hudson Bay southward to the northern boundary line of Iowa, or some miles farther south. The Snake land is problematical, but seems to have been in Canada. The crossing of the frozen water may have been the crossing of the Bainy Lake, or some of the contiguous waters. Shinaki, the land of firs, is the pineclad region of northern Minnesota. The Assinapi could not have been the Dakota Assiniboins, but may have been some Indians living in the same rocky region.[2] The Buffalo land may have been the southern part of Minnesota and northern Iowa. The "Yellow" River, where they raised corn, may have been that which by the early French was called "La Jaune riviere," now known as Vermilion River, uniting with the Mississippi a little below Hastings, and it is probable that the Tallegewi, as before, were the effigy-builders of the Wisconsin-Minnesota-Iowa region of the old mound-builders. Their movements through the
- ↑ The term "Snake" here may mean nothing more than enemy. The Algonquian termed the Iroquois snakes, also the Dakota, applying to them the term Nadoue, or Nadoway, or finally Nadouessi. The last became with the French Nadouesioux and with the English Sioux.
- ↑ The Algonquian words asin and bwan, from which the term Assiniboin is derived, simply means stone people. It is commonly supposed to have reference to the use of heated stones by which they made water sufficiently hot to cook food. But instead it may more probably be referred to the characters of the country in which they lived, which was called by Nicolut the "region of rocks and water." The cooking of food by water heated by stones was not peculiar to them.
