Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/292

Rh and made, on a small outfit, the enormous returns of forty-eight packs of beaver skins, showing the great abundance of this valuable animal in those times, in these northern regions.

Madame Cadotte, relict of Michel Cadotte, who is mentioned as having joined this party, and who is now nearly ninety years of age, relates that she, with many other women of the party, were left to winter at Fond du Lac, as their husbands were going into a dangerous region, and did not wish to be encumbered with women. Her son, Michel Cadotte, Jr., now living at La Pointe, and aged sixty-one years, was then in his cradle. This old woman's memory is still good, and she gives the following account of the progress and adventures of the party after they reached Sandy Lake:—

They proceeded down the Mississippi to the forks or entry of Crow Wing River, which they ascended, and cold weather overtaking them at the mouth of Leaf River, which empties into the Crow Wing, and discovering here numerous signs of beaver, and it, also, being as far as they dare proceed into the country of the fierce and warlike Dakotas, Mons. Cadotte located his winter quarters, and set his men immediately to work in erecting log huts sufficient to hold his whole party and his winter supplies. The country was then covered with game, such as buffalo, elk, bear, and deer, and the hunters soon collected a sufficient quantity of meat for their winter's consumption. Signs of the vicinity of the much dreaded Dakotas being discovered, Cadotte ordered a log fence or wall to be thrown up around his cabins for a defence against any attack which these people, on whose hunting grounds he was encroaching, might think proper to make on him.

In those days. Leech Lake was considered as the extreme northwestern frontier of the Ojibway country, and but a few hardy and fearless hunters, who had already