Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/265

Rh 'Englishman,' he replied, 'my daughter is yet young, and you cannot take her, as white men have too often taken our daughters. It will be time enough to think of complying with your request when you return again to this lake in the summer. My daughter is my favorite child, and I cannot part with her, unless you will promise to acknowledge her by such ceremonies as white men use. You must ever keep her, and never forsake her.' On this basis a union was formed, it may be said, between the Erse and Algonquin races, and it was faithfully adhered to till his death, a period of thirty-seven years.

"Waub-o-jeeg had impaired his health in the numerous war parties which he conducted across the wide summit which separated his hunting grounds from the Mississippi Valley. A slender frame under a life of incessant exertion, brought on a premature decay. Consumption revealed itself at a comparatively early age, and he fell before this insidious disease in a few years, at the early age of about forty-five. He died in 1793, at his native village of Chagoimegon."

Waub-o-jeeg will long live in the traditions of the annals of his tribe. His descendants of mixed blood, by his youngest daughter, who married Mr. Johnston, are now numerous and widespread, being connected with some of the first families in the northwest. Mr. Schoolcraft himself, who is so well known by his numerous valuable works on the red race, married a daughter of this union, who was educated in Ireland. She proved, during the comparatively short period that her life was spared to him, an amiable and loving wife.