FROM DE SOTO TO LA SALLE
continued

Let us jump ahead in our account 132 years to 1673. Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary at Ste. Ignace Mission on Michilimackinac Strait and explorer Louis Joliet, had heard of the great river to the great South Sea. They made plans, laid in supplies, hired voyageurs and on May 17, 1673, despite warnings from friendly Indians about monsters, waterfalls and other perils, went up Lake Michigan in two canoes with five voyageurs. Using information they got from Indians, the seven went up Green Bay, up the Fox River to the portage to the Wisconsin River, down that river and a month after their departure the canoes shot out onto the great river. Father Marquette wanted to name it the Conception and Joliet wished to call it the Colbert for the finance minister of France. They compromised by using the Indian name, the Mississippi. They drifted down the Mississippi, having a memorable, pleasant voyage in a virgin wilderness. The Indians were few, but friendly. They passed a village of the Illinois Indians just south of the mouth of the Ohio. They saw no other villages until they came to the first Quapaw village, Kappa, on the west bank 21 miles north of the Arkansas River. They continued on to a second Quapaw village, Tongigua on the east bank 11 miles north of the Arkansas. They then continued to the mouth of the Arkansas, and heard of two other villages up the Arkansas, both on the north bank - Tourima near the mouth of the river and Osotouy 16 miles further west. Let us now leave Father Marquette and Joliet, raising a cross, celebrating Mass and claiming this land “for God and the King of France” and ask a pertinent question. Were the Quapaws that Father Marquette and Joliet visited, named and had friendly contacts with in 1673 and the Pacaha Indians that Desoto and his adventurers had visited and fought with in 1541 the same Indians? They lived in the same region.

The answer, as determined by the DeSoto Commission in 1939, is that they were not the same. First, the Pacahas ruled a small-scale empire; the Quapaws associated on terms of relative equality among the four villages. The Pacahas had an elaborate temple mound system; the Quapaws lacked this feature. It is true the Quapaws often lived on the temple mounds but that was because they were the only places elevated above the winter and spring flood waters. Osotouy was built on the site of the Menard Mounds. Further, the Pacaha villages were enclosed by a stockade; such a feature was not noted by the French.

If the Pacahas were not the Quapaws, what happened to the Pacahas between DeSoto and Father Marquette and Joliet? They were a rather numerous tribe in 1541. We suggest a logical scenario.

DeSoto and his men had encountered an empire on the downgrade. DeSoto and his men were not wiped out as they probably would have been 200 years earlier when the Pacahas were more vigorous. But the Spanish brought something more deadly than guns and Christianity to the Pacahas.

The Spanish probably were carriers of some diseases, and they were no less the worse for them. They had become immune or were used to them. It could have been no more than what we call the common cold. This went into the Pacaha community and because they had no immunity and no way to treat it, the effect must have been catastrophic. Where a Spaniard might have two weeks of sniffles and sneezes, the Pacahas would die. Over a 100 year period, it must have been horrendous. There have been similar cases. In the early 19th century the Lewis and Clark expedition wintered with the Mandan tribe in central South Dakota. When they returned, only two years later, the Mandans were almost all sick and most had died. By the 1820’s, the Mandans were a few scattered individuals. Less than 25 years wiped out the Mandans. The Pacahas were more numerous, but they had 100 years to die out.