There was more than half a league to traverse to gain the
other bank of the river, and our people were no sooner
arrived than they found there a party of Missouris, sent to
M. de la Harpe by M. de Bienville, then commandant general
at Louisiana, to deliver orders to the former. Consequently
they gave the signal order, and our other two canoes having
crossed the river, the savages gave to our commandant the
letters of M. de Bienville, in which he informed him that
the Spaniards had sent out a detachment from New Mexico
to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in that
country. . . . The success of this expedition was very
calamitous to the Spaniards. Their caravan was composed of
fifteen hundred people, men, women and soldiers, having
with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and bringing also a
great number of horses and cattle, according to the custom
of that nation to forget nothing that might be necessary for
a settlement. Their design was to destroy the Missouris,
and to seize upon their country, and with this intention
they had resolved to go first to the Osages, a neighbouring
nation, enemies of the Missouris, to form an alliance with
them, and to engage them in their behalf for the execution
of their plan. Perhaps the map which guided them was not
correct, or they had not exactly followed it, for it chanced
that instead of going to the Osages whom they sought, they
fell, without knowing it, into a village of the Missouris,
where the Spanish commander, presenting himself to the great
chief and offering him the calumet, made him understand
through an interpreter, believing himself to be speaking
to the Osage chief, that they were enemies of the Missouris,
that they had come to destroy them, to make their women