Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/312

302 paid Mons. Cadotte a visit, and this time he peremptorily demanded the fire-water, using the most threatening language in hopes of intimidating him to do as he wished. The trader, however, firmly refused, and the Indian finally left the lodge in a great rage. His camp lay on the opposite side of the river, about two hundred yards across. He embarked in his canoe, and paddled over, all the time uttering the most abusive and threatening language. Arriving at his water's side, he leaped ashore, and running to his lodge for his gun, he again ran out, and commenced firing at Mons. Cadotte's lodge. He had discharged his gun three times (nearly killing the wife of the trader), when the war-chief of his band ran to him, and wresting the gun out of his hands, he was on the point of breaking the stock over his head, when other Indians interfered. Many of his own people were so enraged at this foolish act of their civil chief, that his life would have been taken, had not Cadotte himself interfered to save him.

When the Lac du Flambeau band (whose chief was a man of decided character, and an uncle of the trader's wife), arrived on the Chippeway River, a few miles below the scene of this occurrence, they were so exasperated that they refused to come up and camp with the Lac Coutereille band, but sent messengers to invite Mons. Cadotte to come and locate himself for the winter in their midst. The trader, to punish the chief who had treated him so badly, though he now showed the deepest contrition, accepted the invitation of his Lac du Flambeau relatives, and proceeding some distance down the river, he wintered with them at the mouth of Jump River.

The following autumn, Michel Cadotte again returned to the Chippeway River, and this time he proceeded with his Indian hunters to the outskirts of the prairies which stretch up this river for about eighty miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. In descending the upper