History of Texas: From Its First Settlement in 1685 to Its Annexation to the United States in 1846, Volume 1 Page: 38

                                
HISTORY OF TEXAS.

address the necessity of the journey, he set out. He took with
him about five thousand dollars in coin and plate, and six thou-
sand dollars' worth of goods.* They found less difficulty in
this their second journey on the same route, from the fact of
their past experience. Besides, they carried with them a por-
table boat of buffalo-skins, and were assisted in crossing the
streams by the kind-hearted Indians. They also furnished
them  with more horses.
The party continued their journey till the 15th of March,
when they came near to the spot where, on the previous tour,
La Salle had buried some corn and beans. Previous to this,
however, they had learned from the Cenis Indians of a French-
man named Rutel, among that tribe, who had wandered from
La Salle on the Mississippi in 1682, and had been living with
these Indians ever since.    Joutel went for him and brought him
to the camp. He was delighted with the idea of again return-
ing to Europe. From the route pursued, and the time they
had been travelling, they must have been, at this time, on the
Neches river.t
* Bossu, vol. i., p. 84.
j Dr. Sparks thinks they were on the waters of the Brasos. -Life of La Salle,
p. 15, note. Others suppose they were on the Trinity. But all the circum-
stances-the time, the direction, the fact of finding Rutel, and the burying of
the corn and beans (done, perhaps, when La Salle had turned back on his previ-
ous journey)-go to show that the last days of this great discoverer were spent
on the Neches. There is yet another reason for this belief. At that season of
the year (March), the buffaloes were down in the timber, and the Indians also
in pursuit of them. Hence, La Salle met more Indians on this second tour, and
Nika had no difficulty in finding buffalo. This was not the case on the Brasos
prairies. From time immemorial there was a great Indian trail about in the
course travelled by La Salle, crossing the Trinity at the present town of Swart-
wout. From the boggy nature of the soil in the spring, it is not unlikely that
the travellers pursued this trail. It passed through the centre of the Cenis na-
tion, and by the Indian village, occupied by the Alabamas after the 'extinction
of the Cenis. La Salle's camp was on the opposite side of the river from the
place where the meat was killed. Had it been the Trinity or the Brasos, horses
could not, at that season, have been sent over for the meat,

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