Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/371

Rh on Otter Tail Lake, and the next morning as he entered the creek, he perceived a huge smoke arising in a direction where he supposed his two cousins, Nug-an-ash, and Blue Eagle, were hunting beaver in an isolated little lake. A smoke in a dangerous vicinity is never without meaning, and satisfied that something serious had befallen his cousins, Flat Mouth returned to a party of his people who were gathering wild rice in an adjacent lake, and immediately sent out a party to go and view the spot from whence the ominous smoke had arisen. They soon returned and reported that they had discovered the mutilated remains of his two cousins; with them had been left three Dakotas in a sitting position, facing the west, whom they had killed.

The Dakotas afterwards related to Flat Mouth that while their war party was stealthily approaching to attack the lodge of his two cousins, which stood on the borders of a little lake, the two hunters first perceived them, from a high wooded promontory of the lake where they happened to be busy in cutting poles for stretching beaver skins. They first fired on the Dakotas, killing one of their number, on which they were furiously attacked, but they defended themselves on the narrow point, and kept off their assailants, till one became wounded, when they quickly embarked in their canoe, and paddled to a small rock islet, standing in the lake, but which could be reached by bullets, or even arrows, from the point which they had just left. They, however, made partial defences by piling stones around them, from which they kept up the fight. The Dakotas surrounded them on all sides, and approached their defences by rolling large logs into the water, and swimming behind them, gradually pushed them towards the island. The two hunters kept them off till their ammunition failed, when they fell an easy prey to their numerous enemies. Three Dakotas were left on the