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204 gradually huddled near the gateway, carrying under their blankets the weapons which were to be used in the approaching work of death.

In the struggle for its possession, the ball at last was gradually carried towards the open gates, and all at once, after having reached a proper distance, an athletic arm caught it up in his bat, and as if by accident threw it within the precincts of the fort. With one deafening yell and impulse, the players rushed forward in a body, as if to regain it, but as they reached their women and entered the gateway, they threw down their wooden bats and grasping the shortened guns, tomahawks, and knives, the massacre commenced, and the bodies of the unsuspecting British soldiers soon lay strewn about, lifeless, horribly mangled, and scalpless. The careless commander was taken captive without a struggle, as he stood outside the fort, viewing the game, which the Ojibway chieftain had got up for his amusement.

The above is the account, much briefened, which I have learned verbally from the old French traders and half-breeds, who learned it from the lips of those who were present and witnessed the bloody transaction. Not a hair on the head of the many Frenchmen who witnessed this scene was hurt by the infuriated savages, and there stands not on record a stronger proof of the love borne them by the tribe engaged in this business than this very fact, for the passions of an Indian warrior, once aroused by a scene of this nature, are not easily appeased, and generally everything kindred in any manner to his foe, falls a victim to satiate his blood-thirsty propensities.

Alexander Henry, one of the few British traders who survived this massacre, gives the most authentic record of this event that has been published, and to his truthful narrative I am indebted for much corroborating testimony, to the more disconnected accounts of the Indians and old