Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/250

240 the attack which the Dakotas, through their great superiority of numbers, were expected to make on the following day.

Early the ensuing morning the enemy possessed themselves of a wood which lay within bullet range of the Ojibway defences, and the fight actively commenced. Each party fighting from behind secure shelters, the battle was kept up the whole day without much loss to either side. It was only on occasions when an enemy was seen to fall, that the bravest warriors would rush from their coverts, to secure the scalp, and the opposite party as eager to prevent their man from being thus mutilated, would rally about his body, and the conflict between the bravest warriors would be, for a few moments, hand to hand, and deadly.

On an occasion of this nature, the Ojibways, towards evening, lost their brave leader, the "Big Marten," who was foremost in every charge, and fighting but little from behind a covert, he had been, during the day, the most prominent mark of the Dakota bullets. At night the enemy retreated, but camped again within sight of the Ojibways, who, discouraged at the loss of their brave war-chief, made a silent retreat during the darkness of the night, and returned to their village at Sandy Lake.

From the circumstance of two battles having been fought in such quick succession on the point of land between the Elk and Mississippi Rivers, this spot has been named by the Ojibways, Me-gaud-e-win-ing, or "Battle Ground."

Ke-che-waub-ish-ash, who fell lamented by his tribe at the last of these two fights, belonged, as his name denotes, to the Clan of the Marten. He was a contemporary of Bi-aus-wah, and the right-hand man of this noted chief. He was the war-chief of the Upper Mississippi, and tradition says, that his arm, above all others, conduced to drive the Dakotas from the country covered by the sources of the