Notes on Salines in the Territory of the Osages, 18 May 1804
Notes on Salines in the Territory
of the Osages
[18 May 1804?]
| No. 1 Plan. |
At about three hundred miles from the village of the great Ozages in a west direction, after having passed many branches of the River Arkansas, is found a low ground, surrounded with Hills of an immense extent, having a diameter of about fifteen Leagues.—The soil is a black sand, very fine, & so hard, that Horses hardly leave their tracts upon it; in warm and dry Weather, there is exhaled from that swamp, vapours, which being afterwards condensed, fall again upon the black sand and cover it with a bed of salt very white and very fine of the thickness of about half an inch. The rains distroy this kind of Phenomenon.— |
| No. 2. Plan. |
At a distance of about fifteen Leagues from the Swamp of which we have spoken, and in a South direction, there is a second mine of mineral salt of the same nature as the other, these two differing only in their colour, the first inclining to the white, and the second approaching to the red, lastly much farther south, and always upon the branches of the Arkansas, there is a salt Spring which may be considered as one of the most interesting Phenomenea of nature. |
| On the declivity of a little hill, there are five holes of about a foot and a half diameter, by two of depth always full, without ever overflowing a drop. very salt—If we take away this salt water, it fills immediately; and at about ten feet lower, there comes out of this same Hill, a strong Spring of pure & Sweet Water.— | |
| No. 3. Plan |
At a distance of about 18 Miles from this low land are found mines of meneral Salt, almost at the surface of the Earth. the Savages who know it perfectly, are found to employ leavers to break it and get it out of the Ground |
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 136:23575); undated; in an unidentified hand.
refered to by the map: the descriptions of salt deposits in lands claimed by the Osage Indians correspond in some respects with deposits marked on the map that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark executed sometime before beginning their journey up the Missouri River and that accompanied a delegation of Osages who reached Washington in July (see Clark and Lewis to TJ, 18 May). The deposit lying three hundred miles west of the main Osage village appears on the map as the “Grand saline,” and the deposit 15 leagues south of that saline likely appears as “Mine of salt.” The mines almost at the surface of the earth may correspond with the “mine de sel” at the Arkansas River tributary labeled “Nis-cu Cro-cra” (, 1: map 6).
Lewis took similar notes, dated 6 May, based on information he obtained about salines from an informant named Étienne Cadron. In addition to details about salt deposits on the easternmost tributary of the Arkansas, which appear in Lewis’s notes and on the map as pot salines, Cadron discussed the “Great saline” and two other deposits in that general vicinity. The geographical details in Lewis’s notes, however, are not identical to those in the notes that ended up in TJ’s papers and are printed above. Some scholars have suggested that the latter document may have come to TJ from William Henry Harrison. The president also received intelligence on salt deposits in the Red River basin from James Wilkinson (, 1:140-1, 180-3; James Wilkinson to TJ, [on or before 19 June]).