Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/352

342 tinctly heard above the din of battle, "Let those who wish to live, escape by retreating, while singly I shall stand in the path of our enemies!" The surviving Pillagers, all but his three brave sons, took him at his word, and leaving them to withstand the pursuit of the Dakotas, they turned and fled. For a long time the yells of those devoted warriors could be heard, as, at each crack of their guns, an enemy bit the dust. Volley after volley were fired on them in vain. They appeared to have a charmed life, but their strength and ammunition failing, the few remaining friends to whom by their self-sacrifice they had given life, heard from a great distance the exultant yells of the Dakotas as they silenced them forever, and tore the reeking scalps from their heads.

Not one-third of that Pillager war party ever returned to their people. Their bones are bleaching, and returning to dust, on the spot where they so bravely fought and fell. We-non-ga (the Vulture), one of the leaders of this ill-fated war party, though sorely wounded, returned home in safety. He was still living a few years since, honored and respected by all his people. It was his boast as he struck the war-pole, to relate his exploits, that on this bloody occasion, he shot down, one after another, seven Dakotas. The slaughter in their ranks must have been very considerable.

The beautiful sheet of water where the above related event took place, has since then been named by the Ojibways, Ish-quon-e-de-win-ing (where but few survived). The French, from the same circumstance, named it Lac du Battaile, interpreted in "Nicollet's map of the Mississippi Valley," into Battle Lake.

Esh-ke-bug-e-coshe, the venerable chief of the Pillagers, from whose lips I have obtained the above account, was a young man when the fight at Battle Lake took place. He