Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/233

Rh The most reliable account of this occurrence which the writer has been enabled to obtain, is that given by Esh-ke-bug-e-coshe, the venerable and respected chief of the northern Ojibways. He is one whose veracity cannot be impeached. He is between seventy and eighty years of age, and the tale having been transmitted to him by his grandfather Waus-e-ko-gub-ig (Bright Forehead), who acted as leader of the Ojibway warriors who fought in this action, his account can be implicitly relied on.

"The M'dé-wak-anton Dakotas, being at last obliged, from the repeated incursions of the Ojibways, to evacuate their grand villages at Mille Lacs and Knife Lake, now located themselves on Rum River. Smarting under the loss of their ancient village sites, and their best hunting grounds and rice lakes, they determined to make one more united and national effort to stem the advance of their troublesome and persevering enemies, and drive them back to the shores of Lake Superior.

Having for some years past been enjoying an active communion with the French traders, they had become supplied with fire-arms, and in this respect they now stood on the same footing with the Ojibways, who had long had the advantage over them, of having been first reached by the whites.

War parties formed at the different villages of the Dakotas, and met by appointment at the Falls of St. Anthony, where the ceremonies preceding the march of Indian warriors into an enemy's country being performed, the party, consisting of from four to five hundred men, embarked in their canoes, and proceeding up the Mississippi, reached, without meeting an enemy, the confluence of the Crow Wing River with the "Father of Rivers."

It was but a short time previous that they had possessed and occupied the country lying on and about the headwaters of the Mississippi, and being thus perfectly familiar