Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/440

430 built on the river of that name 180 leagues from Dauphin. The Fort des Prairies is eighty leagues from Poskoyac on the banks of the same river.

This post, writes Bougainville, "called 'The Sea of the West,' embracing as it did the whole country from Rainy Lake to the Rocky Mountains, and from North Saskatchewan to the Missouri, was in the gift of the Governor General of Canada, and was bestowed by him upon his favorites. It produced yearly from 300 to 400 bundles of furs, and the commanding officer leased the post for the annual sum of 8000 francs."

During the year 1746, under English influence, the Ojibways of Lake Superior became unfriendly to the French. Two canoes from Montreal, on their way to Lake Superior, were attacked at La Cloche, an isle in Lake Huron, by Ojibways. Members of the same tribe at Grosse Isle, near Mackinaw, stabbed a Frenchman, and the horses and cattle at Mackinaw were killed, and to prevent surprise, the officer of the fort was obliged to beat the "tap-too." Governor Galissoniere of Canada, in a dispatch of October 1748, to Count Maurepas in charge of the colonies of France wrote: "Voyageurs robbed and maltreated at Sault Ste. Marie, and elsewhere on Lake Superior; in fine there appears to be no security anywhere."

The last French officer at Chagouamigon Point was Hertel de Beaubassin. When an ensign of infantry, in 1748, with some Indian allies he made an incursion toward Albany, and thirty houses of unsuspecting settlers were burned. In August, 1749, he came to Albany by direc-