Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/257

Rh siderable extent, and begged to be incorporated in their tribe, and to live under their powerful protection. They offered to be their cutters of wood and carriers of water, and filled with compassion at their broken numbers and tears of sorrow, the Osaugees, who are a family of the Algic stock, at last, for the first time, formally received them into their tribe, and it is only from this period that the fire of these two tribes (whose names are so linked together in modern history), can be truly said as having become one and undivided.

The old men of the Ojibways assert that the Odugamies speak a distant language, and do not really belong to the Algonquin council fires, and it is only since their close intercourse with the Osaugees that the Algonquin language has become in use among them. I am aware that this assertion is directly contrary to the results of Mr. Schoolcraft's researches, who places the Odugamies as one of the most prominent tribes of the Algics. Never having had the advantage of comparing the peculiar dialect of this tribe with the Ojibway, I am consequently not prepared to deliver a direct opinion. Their warfare with the Odugamies has been of such long standing and so sanguinary, that the Ojibways may naturally consider them as much a distinct race from themselves, as the Dakotas or Winnebagoes, the last of whom, in time of peace, they are accustomed to denominate as "younger brothers," which circumstance, however, should not mislead us into the belief that they consider them as being really a kindred tribe in any closer degree than their being respective families of the red race in general.