Bibliography

• Bookwood Historical Collection, Star Lake

Lake Katakittekon, or "Lac Vieux Desert," at the head of the Wisconsin river (and not of the Montreal, as was supposed), which it is probable may fall within the county of Brown. The middle of this lake was made a point in the boundary of the Territory. On an island in the lake there was an old deserted planting ground of the Indians; hence its name with the French, Lac Vieux Desert. Lake of the Desert, as this is sometimes translated is an improper name, the country about it being nto a desert, but one of great fertility. It occupies a high level about Lakes Superior and Michigan, and abound in small lakes, which constitute the heads of several large rivers. The menomonee of Lake Michigan, then Ontonagon and Montreal of Lake Superior, and the Wisconsin and Chippewa, of the Mississippi, all take their rise on the summit in the Katakittekon country. The following extract from Capt. Cram's report relative to this interesting country, is the only information we have in relation to it. "The water of tghese small reservoirs, and of the streams generally, is cold and limpid. Some of the lakes were observed to contain the speckled trout, such as are generally met with in high latitudes in the United States. The scenery of these lakes is beautiful, and the land adjacent to them is better than is generally believed by those who have not had an opportunity of personal examination. The country is not mountainous, but may be denominated 'rolling.' The growth of timber is tolerably heavy, consisting of white and yellow pine on the borderes of the lakes; in some instances of cedar, fir, hemlock, and tamarack; and a little back of the lakes, of sugar maple white maple, white and yellow birch, poplar, bass and hemlock. The soil is of a nature to be adapted to the culture of wheat, rye, grass, oats, flax, hemp, and potatoes. In some places the soil is rocky, although no very large msses or ledges of rocks were observed. The manufacture of maple sugar is carried on to a considerable extent by the Indians of this region. Man of their 'sugar bushes' were observed, and form the oldness of the marks upon he trees, the Indians must have known the art of extracting this luxury from the forest from an early date of their history. A very good kind of potatoe (wild?) is raised here, the mode of preserving which was entirely new to us. The potatoes, which are of an oblong shape, and not larger than a man's thumb, are partially boiled, and carefully peeled while hot, without breaking the pulp, and strung like so many beads upon a twine, or tough thread of bark, and then hung in festooons on the ridge-pole of the wigwam, over the smoke of the fire, where they become thoroughly dry. This process renders the potatoe fit for transportation and use during the severest fronts without injury. The squaws take great interest in preparing this article of food, which is about the only vegetable they cultivate. This district is tolerable well provided with deer, beaver, otter, martin, mink, muskrat, ducks of various kinds, fish, teal, wild geese and partridges. Deer, however, are not so plentiful as further south. Winter usually sets in about the 20th October, in the Katakittekon country: this year from the 20th to the 28th October, the mercury ranged as low as from nine to twelve degrees below freezing, and for several days during the latter part of October, it was continually snowing. On the return of our part, Sandy Lake outlet had become so much frozen as to make it necessary to drag the canoes on the ice, and the kice was make very fast in all the lakes and streams--this in the very last days of October." the Lake Katakittekon is about three miles in its extreme length from north to south, and is very irregular in form.