Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/112

102 of the main shore directly opposite the western end of the island, and during the night, two of their number crossed over, a distance of two miles and a half, each swimming by the side of a log, and attacked a family who were fishing by torchlight along the eastern shore of the island.

With four scalps, and the canoe of those they had killed, they returned to their friends, who immediately retreated, satisfied with their success. Early in the morning, the mangled bodies of the slain were discovered, and the Ojibways, collecting their warriors, made a long but unavailing pursuit.

Shortly after this occurrence, a party of one hundred and fifty Dakota warriors again found their way to the lake shore, and taking a position on the extreme point of Shag-a-waum-ik-ong, immediately opposite the Ojibway village, they laid in ambush for some stray enemy to come within their reach. Shag-a-waum-ik-ong is a narrow neck or point of land about four miles long, and lying nearly parallel to the island of La Pointe, toward the western end of which it converges, till the distance from point to point is not more than two miles. In former times the distance is said to have been much less, the action of the waves having since gradually washed away the sand of which it is composed.

It lays across the entry to a deep bay, and it has derived its name from the tradition that Man-ab-osho created it to bar the egress of a great beaver which he once hunted on the Great Lake, and which had taken refuge in this deep bay. The name signifies "The soft beaver dam," as the great beaver had easily broken through it, making the deep gap which now forms the entry of the bay. This point or peninsula does not average in width more than twenty rods, and in many places it is not more than six rods across. It is covered with a growth of scrubby oak and pine, and the extreme end where the Dakotas lay in