The Graves of the Golden Bear: Ancient Fortresses and Monuments of the Ohio Valley

by: Rick Osmon

Scrib'd Sample Chapter The following is a sample chapter from Rick Osmon's latest release. This text will be available initially in digital formats followed by a traditional print copy. The find out more about this title, please visit the Graves of the Golden Bear page at the highlighted link. All rights Reserved 2011 by Rick Osmon No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher. Author is responsible for the content held within. Digital Editions Published by Grave Distractions Publications http://www.gravedistractions.com Editorial Notes: The author hopes that you enjoy this text. He would like to remind you that some of the locations mentioned in this text are on private property. If you are planning on visiting any of these sites on private property, obtain permission from the property holder. Trespassing is considered a criminal offense in most state and local jurisdictions. Please consult the appropriate legal counsel in your particular jurisdiction for more information.

Chapter 3 Telling King Louis Without Telling the World

The presence of entries such as the lead mines on the Delisle map would have no bearing on the previous claim unless the French were actually working those mines. Any mining operation may have been implied to the Holy Roman Empire, the English, or the Spanish, but is not a fact of history. If the mines had been worked by a previous occupation of a Christian nation, the French claim would be null and void. This could indicate that the French knew and were not telling anyone outside the highest echelons of the French court. One might also speculate that the lower case "p" and upper case counterpart was part of the means of conveying critical information to King Louis without that information being conveyed to others. It may be part of a message that employs steganography. The small "p" associated with the Iowayan mine is an important clue to something. Delisle was one of the most highly educated men in Europe at the time and he took two full years to develop this map. It is reasonable to assume that the difference in case is neither accidental nor a clerical error. The previous instance is not it the only example on the Delisle map.1

Detail of 1718 Delisle Map showing Lead Mines and Rocky River Down the Mississippi from the Dubuque, there are lead mining areas on the Rock River. On the Delisle map, it is labeled Assenisipa eu r. a La Roche. The Winnebago name for the river is E-neen-ne-shun-nuck, or river of big stones. The Algonquin name is Assini-sipi or stone river. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson proposed that a portion of the territory through which the Assenisipa, or Rock River flows, be called Assenisipa. Adjacent to the Rock River is the label Cristal de roche and symbols denoting a pair of Kickapoo villages (les Quicapou) roughly where the city of Beloit now stands. Note the lower case r on the second iteration of roche and the
The advantage of steganography, over cryptography alone, is that messages do not attract attention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messagesno matter how unbreakable will arouse suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal or could cause political turmoil.
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upper case L on La Roche. Why use an upper case L on that article? Delisle was a highly educated man and would not make such a mistake on a document that was to be presented to the king and regent.2 The use of these flaws was deliberate. Taken as an aggregate, the out of context and inconsistent letters make up PLR. If one includes the lower case a in La Roche, the aggregate becomes PLaR. Was Delisle indicating, using steganography, that the French explorers had found evidence that Knights Templar had preceded them in the region? While I am confident that a few readers will now perceive this as a fantastic leap of logic and make derogatory forum posts about my logic or psychological status, I am equally confident that others will be intrigued enough to continue reading. While it is speculation, the entries on the map have been there for nearly three centuries. The evidence is there for interpretation and has not been "invented". Antoine Rossignol and his son, Bonaventure Rossignol, were the Royale French cryptographers who devised what is known as The Great Cipher in the late 1620's or early 1630's. The Great Cipher remained unbroken until 1893. It is a hall of fame cipher and one that is studied widely by professional cryptographers to this day. It has a modern day analog in Microsoft and several other computer Operating systems as well as in all computer text. When you see .dll or unicode characters, think Great Cipher. And when you see an error message of a missing dll, this too is reminiscent of the Great Cipher. One of the strengths of the Great Cipher was that it contained null cases, or meaningless transforms meant to act as canards, These false leads acted to send those attempting to decrypt the cipher in the wrong direction. Portrait of La Salle Think of the line in Raiders of the Lost Ark, They're digging in the wrong place. However, no matter how well or how long the Rossignol cipher resisted decryption, it was known to be a cipher hiding some type of information. If the Delisle map is indeed a steganographic cipher, its message has gone undetected, and un-deciphered, for nearly three centuries. How might one determine whether Delisle actually used
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.The city Of Beloit uses as part of their city motto "a gem of the Rock River Valley ".

steganography or Great Cipher cryptography? Perhaps one should start by determining what is NOT included on his map. An example of a missing feature is the site called Fort Louis la Roche. Today, Fort Louis la Roche is the Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. French explorers, led by Ren-Robert Cavelier and Sieur de La Salle, built Fort St. Louis on a jutting bluff by the river in the winter of 1682. Called La Roches on the Delisle and subsequent French maps, the jutting rock bluff provided an advantageous position for the stockade above the Illinois River. A wooden palisade was the only form of defenses that La Salle used in securing the site. Inside the enclosure were a few wooden houses and native shelters. The French intended St. Louis to be the first of several fortifications to defend against English incursions and keep the English settlements confined to the East Coast. Accompanying the French to the region were allied members of several native tribes from eastern areas, who had integrated with the Kaskaskia: the Miami, Shawnee, and Mahican. The tribes established a new settlement at the base of the butte known as Hotel Plaza. After La Salle's five year monopoly ended, La Barre wished to obtain Fort Saint Louis along with Fort Frontenac for himself. By orders of the governor La Barre's traders and his officer were escorted to Illinois. On August 11, 1683 Prudhomme obtained approximately one and three quarters of a mile of the north portage shore. Calling the La Roches site a fort is an invention by modern American historians. La Salle had referred to it as simply a trading post. Had La Salle taken on the difficult task of enclosing the site with stone, this would have resulted in the French then calling it a true fort. While the intention of La Salle might have been to do so, there is no evidence a stone enclosure ever came to fruition. French troops commanded by Pierre Deliette may have occupied La Roches from 1714 to 1718. Deliette's jurisdiction over the region ended when the territory was transferred from Canada to Louisiana. Fur trappers and traders used the fort periodically in the early 18th Detail of 1755 Douglass Map derived century until it became too dilapidated from 1732 D'Anville Map for practical use. No surface remains of

the structures are to be found at the site today. The region was periodically occupied by a variety of native tribes who were forced westward by the expansion of European settlements. The occupying tribes included the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe. On April 20, 1769, an Illinois Confederation warrior assassinated Chief Pontiac while he was on a diplomatic mission in Cahokia. According to local legend, the Ottawa along with their allies the Potawatomi, attacked a band of Illini along the Illinois River. The Illini climbed to the butte to seek refuge from the attack. The Ottawa and Potawatomi continued the siege until the Illini starved to death. After hearing the story, Europeans referred to the butte as Starved Rock. A fort, or even a stockade, at la Roches would have been a strategic site for the new colony of La Louisiane. The fort is the closest structure to the interior and buttressed defenses against English colonial incursions. For some inexplicable reason, Delisle left la Roches off the map that was intended to convey strategic information to the young King Louis XV and Regent, Phillipe II. An English map, derived from D'Anville, shows elements that likely were lifted from the Delisle map. The D'Anville map was subsequently used in the 1755 Douglass map. D'Anville's map, "Carte de la Louisiane" was published in 1732 and is currently part of the David Rumsey collection.3 The following is description of D'Anville as a cartographer and of his works in general: "Most of D'Anville's atlases were made up for the individual customer, so it appears that no two are alike. Many of the maps are multisheet maps that have here been joined, so the actual map sheet count is about 45. This set is accompanied by a printed list of "Cartes Geographiques de M. D'Anville" with the maps numbered 1-38 in ms, corresponding to the maps in the atlas. This sheet also lists "Ouvrages par ecrit, et qui ont ete imprimes." One of the listed books is dated 1777. D'Anville's maps have a clarity and directness that is very "modern." He read widely, and incorporated the best available geographic knowledge into his work. The English and others copied from his maps extensively. Many of the maps were missing when we acquired this atlas, and have been added subsequently.

. North America from the French of Mr. DAnville Improved with the Back Settlements of Virginia and Course of Ohio Illustrated with Geographical and Historical Remarks. London: Published by Thomas Jefferys, 1755. Dimensions of entire sheet: 20 X 18 inches. Dimensions of image: 19 15/16 X 17 7/8 inches. Originally tipped into A Summary, Historical and Political of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America. By William Douglass. (Boston, 1755).
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Maps stored, some bound, in a binding with half leather and cloth ties. "Atlas" printed on the spine." 4 The Delisle inclusion of Cristal de roche is absent from the D'Anville map. The sites of the lead mines and la Roches, is present even though the latter had been abandoned more than ten years. Most notably on the Douglass map there is the notation at bottom center of the detailed map above. At the confluence One of many Key sheets for the Great of the Ohio and the Mississippi the Cipher map reads French Fort ruined. The notation of Stockade Fort F can also be found at the confluence of the Wabash and Ohio. The latter notation is not on the D'Anville map, which indicates Douglass' source is separate from D'Anville's map. There are no historical references to the French ever having built either a stone fortress, or even a stockade, at either major confluence. Given that in Delisle's rendering it was already an ancient fort, Douglass was apparently even worse at translating colonial period French than I am having no formal training in the language. The stockade fort, that Douglass seems to allege was French, was probably the remnants of the stockade at what is now known as the Mann site. This site has been found to be a rich Mississippian archeological site in Perry County, Indiana. The French word ancien can vary in meaning depending on context from ancient Greek to previous paragraph to former Prime Minister. In the context of the Delisle map, it would seem Delisle considered the fort as we think of ancient in the English usage. D'Anville's "Carte de la Louisiane" provides an accurate rendition of the lower Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Red, the Osage, and the lower Missouri rivers. Thomas Jefferson bought seven maps by D'Anville in 1787. Although the titles of the maps he acquired are not known, Jefferson must have been familiar with D'Anville's maps of North America, including "Carte de la Louisiane". In a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin relating to a newly commissioned map of North America, Jefferson discussed the use of D'Anville as a reference for the lower Mississippi basin. Jefferson may not have owned "Carte de la Louisiane". It is likely Jefferson knew of "Carte de la Louisiane" since Meriwether Lewis was still trying to obtain a
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http://www.davidrumsey.com

copy of a D' Anville map in Philadelphia shortly before starting out on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The renowned accuracy of D'Anville's maps, combined with unabashed duplication as evidenced by the Douglass copy, lends credence to the adage that Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. D'Anville copied from Delisle. Use of the Grand Cipher combined with the practice of steganography is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. The prospect is enhanced when considering Delisle as well educated, meticulous, and charged of such high responsibility in 1716. How might such a combination be discernible within the 1718 Map? Recall that many aspects of the rendering are considerably flawed from reality and that Delisle was known as the premier geographer and is to this day revered as a world class cartographer. Back to the apparent mistakes in Delisle's labeling. If a line starting at Starved Rock is drawn through the capital "P", it extends to the numeral 285 across the top of the map. Does this indicate a Great Cipher substitution for the syllable Tem? If the line is drawn from La Rocher through the lower case "p", it extends to the 280. Without having the Great Cipher key that was presumably supplied to Delisle, there is no means of determining exactly what (if anything) was being encoded. It is also plausible that Delisle used other means to represent the numerical code. For instance, numbers could have been encrypted by using the numbers of huts representing tribal villages. The Kickapoo were part of the Illiniwak as were the Detail of D'Anville map showing "Ancien Fort" Chicagon. So why did Delisle divide them into three groups? Was he representing the numeral 232? Why would one use the designation as "Old Village of the Illiniwak", when it was still occupied at the time? The error may indicate a subtraction cipher or decrement cipher (employing the previous case of ancien) with a meaning that remains unclear at best and unsolvable at worst. When the Delisle and D'Anville maps are compared for the representation of the Illinois River basin, both against each other and against modern maps, it becomes clear that Delisle skewed the location somewhat of

both the river valley and Starved Rock. It is contended that this was deliberate in order to make the key or keys line up correctly. Delisle and D'Anville were roughly contemporaries and accessed the same source data. Delisle was also tasked with teaching young king Louis all about the geography of the realm. It seems inconceivable that Delisle would skew this section by mistake. There was too much at stake in the European and American political climates to provide errant information to the young king. Although D'Anville left off any mention of Fort St Louis at Starved Rock, he included the label of Ancien Fort at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Oubache. He also included a note that was missing on the Delisle map, a copper mine. D'Anville is described in cartography and cartology circles as one of the most careful map makers of his period. That underscores the importance that both Delisle and D'Anville placed on the Ancien Fort. Both men labeled and located the fort the same. Only after the Douglass copy of D'Anville's 1732 map was published, the feature was considered to be of French origin and construction. The early French explorers of the Mississippi knew it was already ancient and they may have known who built it. Delisle's job was to tell Louis XV without telling the rest of the world.

Detail of D'Anville map showing Illinois river