La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1679 )THE KANKAKEE. 167bestride, crept twisting like a snake among the weedsand rushes . Here were the sources of the Kankakee,one of the heads of the Illinois. 1 They set theircanoes on this thread of water, embarked their baggageand themselves, and pushed down the sluggishstreamlet, looking, at a little distance, like men whosailed on land. Fed by an unceasing tribute of thespongy soil, it quickly widened to a river; and theyfloated on their way through a voiceless, lifelesssolitude of dreary oak barrens, or boundless marshesovergrown with reeds. At night, they built theirfire on ground made firm by frost, and bivouackedamong the rushes. A few days brought them to amore favored region. On the right hand and on the1The Kankakee was called at this time the Theakiki, or Haukiki(Marest) ; a name which, a Charlevoix says, was afterwards corruptedby the French to Kiakiki whenc, probably, its presentform. In La Salle's time, the name " Theakiki * was iven to thtriver Illinois through all its course. It was also called the RiviereSeignelay, the Riviere des Macopins, u,nd the Rivier' Divine, orRiviere de la Divine. The latter name, when Charlevoix visitedthe country in 1721, was confined to the northern branch. He give*,an interesting and somewhat graphic account f the portage anathe sources of the Kankakee, in his letter dated De la Source duTheakiki, ce dix-sept Septembre, 1721.Why the Illinois should ever have been called the " Divine," itis not easy to see. The Memoirs of St. Simon suggest an explanation.Madame de Frontenac and her friend Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise,he tells us, lived together in apartments at the Arsenal, wherethey held their salon and exercised a great power in society. Theywere called at court les Divines. (St. Simon, v. 335 :Cheruel.) Incompliment to Frontenac, the river may have been named after hiswife or her friend. The suggestion is due to M. Margry. I haveseen a map by Raudin, Frontenac's engineer, on which the river iicalled " Riviere de la Divine ou TOutrelaise."