with Indian presents. After a march of three days I was taken ill, which I attributed to hard living in the Nipegon Country; considering, however, the urgency of the business, and that there was not any one of the party capable of acting as interpreter, I struggled with my indisposition; apprehending, also, that if I could not pursue the journey, I should be exposed to great inconveniences; and therefore I encreased my endeavours, determined to risk my life at all hazards.
The fourth day we encamped at Lac les Puans, so called, I apprehend, from the Indians who reside on the banks being naturally filthy[1]—here we got plenty of
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- ↑ Lac les Puans (Stinking Lake) was a name used by the French for Green
Bay. The origin of this term was long supposed to be either in the ill-smelling
shores or the filthy character of the native Puants (i. e., Winnebagoes). In
Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, p. 360, however, an early writer testifies to the cleanliness of the Puants.
It appears that the original Algonquian name for these people, who are an offshoot from the Sioux, was Ouinepeg, a word which has come down to us in two forms Winnipeg and Winnebago. The meaning of Ouinepeg was, "men of (or from) the fetid (or bad-smelling) water." It is probable that these people may at one time have lived near a sulphur spring or on the shore of a salt lake. The earliest French inferred that the allusion was to the ocean; hence Nicolet's appearance among the Winnebagoes on Green Bay (1634) attired as a mandarin, under the apprehension that these "Men of the Sea"—as they were called in some of the earlier French accounts—were Chinamen. Herein we have an illustration of the tenacity of the old theory that America was but an outlying portion of Asia. La Salle's post at La Chine, near Montreal, which was so nicknamed because some thought it to be on the road to China, is another case in point. When the "Men of the Sea" were discovered to be ordinary Indians, their Algonquian appellation Ouinepeg was trans-
Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi and xvii. Driven from their habitat in
Eastern Wisconsin, about 1740, the Foxes joined with their kindred, the Sauks,
and settled on the Mississippi, siding alternately with the British and Americans
during the wars of the Revolution and of 1812-15. One band of the Sauks
participated in the Black Hawk War (1832). At present the combined population
of the Sauks and Foxes is about four hundred, located on a reservation in Iowa.
The Sioux were the Minnesota branch of this nation, under their chief Wabasha, q. v., post, note 87.—Ed.
