Mr. Neill, usually very accurate and painstaking, has fallen into an error in his prefatory notes to the last edition of his valuable History of Minnesota.  Speaking of DuLuth, he says: 

“He appears to have entered Minnesota by way of the Pigeon or St. Louis River, and to have explored where no Frenchman had been, and on July 2, 1679, was at Kathio (Kathaga) perhaps on Red Lake or Lake of the Woods, which was called ‘the great village of the Wadouessioux,’ one hundred and twenty leagues from the Songaskicons and Houetepons who were dwellers in the Mille Lac region.”

Now Kathaga (Mr. Neill’s Kathio) was located at the Falls of St. Anthony on the Mississippi as the whole current of Dakota traditions clearly shows and DuLuth’s dispatches clearly indicate.  Besides, the Songaskicons and Houetepons were not and never were “dwellers in the Mille Lac region.”  The Songaskicons (Sissetons) were at that time located on the Des Moines river (in Iowa), and the Houetabons (Ouadebatons) at and around Big Stone Lake.  The Isantees occupied the region lying between the mouth of the Minnesota River and Spirit Lake (Mille Lacs) with their principal village—­Kathaga—­where the city of Minneapolis now stands.  These facts account for the “one hundred and twenty leagues” as distances were roughly reckoned by the early French explorers.

September 1, 1678, Daniel Greysolon DuLuth, a native of Lyons, France, left Quebec to explore the country of the Dakotas.  “The next year (1679) on the 2nd day of July, he caused the king’s arms to be planted in the great village of the Nadouessioux (Dakotas) called Kathio” (Kathaga) “where no Frenchman had ever been, also at the Songaskicons and Houetabons, one hundred and twenty leagues distant from the former. * * * * On this tour he visited Mille Lacs, which he called Lake Buade, the family name of Frontenac, governor of Canada.” Neill’’s History of Minnesota, p. 122.  This is correct, except the name of the village—­Kathio, which is a misprint or perhaps an error of a copyist.  It should be Kathaga.  DuLuth was again at the Falls of St. Anthony in 1680 and returned to Lake Superior via the Mississippi, Rum River and Mille Lacs, according to his own dispatches.

Franquelin’s “Carte de la Louisiane” printed at Paris A.D. 1684, from information derived from DuLuth, who visited France in 1682-3, and conferred with the minister of the Colonies and the minister of Marine—­shows the inaccuracy, as to points of compass at least, of the early French explorers.  According to this map, Lake Buade (Mille Lacs) lies north-west of Lake Superior and Lake Pepin lies due west of it.

DuLuth was afterward appointed to the command of Fort Frontenac near Niagara Falls, and died there in 1710.  The official dispatch from the Governor of Canada to the French Government is, as regards the great explorer, brief and expressive—­“Captain DuLuth is dead.  He was an honest man.”