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FLEUR DE LYS
cause afterwards (as will be shown at the proper time) there was built near this river, one league away from the lake, the town of New Orleans. Five leagues farther, always turning to the left along the lake shore, one comes to a stagnant body of water that the savages call bayoti-que;41 it is a drain for waters that flow from high grounds. We made camp near this place because the savages who were guiding us made us understand that we should go by way of it to the Missicipy River.
On the morning of the next day, having left our longboat in that bay, we set out on foot to make our way to the river bank. For three quarters of a league we crossed through a wood filled with cypress; these are trees that grow only in low, marshy regions and that arc of a prodigious height, bearing a kind of olive as fruit. Coming out of this wood, we entered some tall reeds, or canes, which bear a grain very much like oats, from which the savages make a quite tasty bread and also a soup which they call saganiite.42 After crossing through these canes for a quarter of a league, we reached the bank, of the Missicipy.43
This greatly delighted us. We looked with admiration at the beauty of this river, which was at least half a league
41	This bayou may have been Bayou Piquant or Bayou Labranche. Both flow into Lake Pontchartrain on the west side.
42	A porridge dish made of ground corn. Sagamite almost certainly goes back to Algonquin kisagamile, "the water is hot,” which Frenchmen thought to be the name of the hominy cooking. With the ground corn Indians sometimes mixed beans, meat, and other food. William A. Read, Louisiana-French (Baton Rouge, 1931), pp. 10j—106.
^ 43 Penicaut is apparently giving an account of Bienville’s expedition which the Mississippi through Lake Pontchartrain in August, 1699. This part of
rative has been carefully analyzed by Elizabeth McCann. Sec "Penicaut Chronicle,” pp. 295-97 notes.
reached j the nar-and His/
AND CALUMET
wide at the spot where we saw it, which is forty leagues above its embouchure at the sea. Its water is light-colored, very good to drink, and quite clear. At this place its banks are covered with canes, about which we have just spoken. Everywhere else the area along the river appeared to us to be covered with all kinds of forest trees, as far as we were able to discover, such as oaks, ash, elms, and others whose names we did not know.
That night we slept on the bank of the river under some trees, bpon which wild turkeys (of which thererare great quantities) came at dusk to perch for the night. By moonlight we killed as many of them as we wanted, without their being frightened away by the discharge of our guns. I can say in all truth that I have never seen such big ones in France, for these weighed as high as thirty pounds when ready for the spit. Next day we returned to our longboats. Those who had remained behind to guard them were very much gladdened when we informed them that we had slept on the bank of the Missicipy River.
We then continued our way on Lake Pontchartrain in, order to make the circuit of it, and we slept five leagues farther on, on the bank of a manchacq 44—.which in French means a channel—through which runs a crcek that comes from the Missicipy River. By way of this stream one reaches another lake which is two leagues from there and which nowadays is called Lake Maurepas. This
44 A Choctaw word meaning "rear entrance,” according to Read, Louisiana-Trench, p. 157. This particular manchac, between Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas, is now called Pass Manchac. N.b. that Penicaut was aware of the continuous flow of water from the Mississippi through Bayou Manchac and the Amite River (which he docs not name) into Maurepas and then through Pass Manchac into Pontchartrain.