Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/276

266 rice which abounds in many of the northern inland lakes, becomes ripe and fit to gather. Then, for a month or more, they are busied in laying in their winter's supply.

When the rice-gathering is over, the autumn is far advanced, and by the time each family has secreted their rice and other property with which they do not wish to be encumbered during the coming winter's march, they move once more in a body to the usual rendezvous at Gull Lake, or Crow Wing, to search for meat on the dangerous hunting grounds of their enemies. In those days which we now speak of, game of the larger species was very plentiful in this region of country, where now the poor Ojibway, depending on his hunt for a living, would literally starve to death.

As an illustration of the kind and abundance of animals which then covered the country, it is stated that an Ojibway hunter named No-ka, the grandfather of the Chief White Fisher, killed in one day's hunt, starting from the mouth of Crow Wing River, sixteen elk, four buffalo, five deer, three bear, one lynx, and one porcupine. There was a trader wintering at the time at Crow Wing, and for his winter's supply of meat, No-ka presented him with the fruits of this day's hunt. This occurred about sixty-five years ago, when traders had become more common to the Ojibways of the Upper Mississippi. It is from this old warrior and stalwart hunter, who fearlessly passed his summers on the string of lakes which form the head of the No-ka River, which empties into the Mississippi nearly opposite the present site of Fort Ripley, that the name of this stream is derived.

Long Prairie, the present site of the Winnebago agency, was at this time the favorite winter resort of those bands of the Dakota tribe now known as the Warpeton and Sisseton. It was in the forests surrounding this isolated prairie, that herds of the buffalo and elk took shelter