Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
July 23, 1820: Downriver toward Sandy Lake
Editor's Note:
Separated from Doty and Schoolcraft by nearly two centuries, we too easily romanticize their experience, assuming such explorations to be times of adventure and excitement. In fact, most days were tedious and boring, and the petty annoyances of long hours in a cramped canoe, torments of mosquitoes, and seemingly endless monotony of the leaf-shrouded shoreline comprised the substance of the journey for the travelers. Doty already (on July 16) confessed, "There are certainly few situations which fortune could compel me to endure, more dreadful than this" and on the 24th Schoolcraft will call their trip upriver to Cass Lake, "one of peculiar privation, fatigue, and physical suffering."
Location: southeast of modern Jacobson, Minn.
View Schoolcraft's complete description in his 1821 Narrative
[Schoolcraft:] Between our sufferings from the stings of the mosquitoes, and our anxiety to rejoin our friends at Sandy lake, we obtained little rest, and decamped at a quarter past four in the morning. We reached the falls of Peckagama at one o'clock, and spent forty minutes in crossing the portage with our baggage and canoes. We now successively passed the Prairie and Trout rivers, and proceeded twenty-eight miles below our encampment of the 18th, distance ninety-eight miles. -- Weather cloudy, with rain.
During the forenoon we met a canoe of Chippeways on their ascent, and passing with rapidity, merely exchanged the common salutation of bon jour, a term they have borrowed from the French. Towards evening, an animal of singular appearance, supposed to be the Wolverine, was seen swimming across the river, but our efforts to take it proved unavailing. Such are the incidents of a voyage in this remote region.
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