Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/189

Rh knife and smallpox, still live on the banks of the Missouri in these primitively constructed dwellings. This is an important fact in the early Indian history of Minnesota, and the writer has taken every pains to procure every account and circumstance which might conduce to prove its truth.

It will account at once for the numerous earthen mounds which are to be found at different points on the Upper Mississippi, as they may then be safely considered as the remains of the earthen lodges of these former occupants of this fair region.

Till of late years the Kniste-no and Assineboins were accustomed to send their war parties against the Gros Ventres and Arickarees, and the Ojibways were often induced to join them. They forced them to evacuate their earthen villages which were located on the east banks of the Missouri, and to select new homes further west, placing thereby this great river between them and their more powerful enemies.

But since the smallpox has swept them nearly all away, these allied tribes have taken pity on them, and they occasionally pay them peace visits, and even fight in their defence. In this manner a direct communication has arisen between the Ojibways and these remnants of far western tribes, which has been the means of saving from total oblivion many of their ancient traditions, and amongst the number, the fact of their former occupation of the great basin from which the Mississippi derives its sources.

Esh-ke-bug-e-coshe, who has often visited them in his younger days, terms them "relatives;" he describes their earthen wigwams, and says that they are more neat and cleanly than other Indians, from the fact of daily washing their bodies and using a certain kind of clay to whiten their skins. He says also, that formerly they used to raise small quantities of tobacco, the leaf of which, as obtained from them, was considered of great value, and for which