Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/442

432 they stopped, and held a dance. Each one struck the post, and told the story of his exploits. The murderer, when he came up, boastfully narrated that he had killed the trader and his family. The next day the chief called his men aside, and said that the white man should never have boasted of murdering his employer and family: and added, "We boast of having killed our enemies, never our friends. Now he is going back to the place where we live, and perhaps he will again murder. He is a bad man; neither we nor our friends are safe. If you are of my mind, we will strike this man on the head."

They then invited him to a feast, and urged him to eat all he could, and as soon as he ceased to eat he was killed. The chief cut up the body and boiled it for another feast, but the Indians refused to partake of it, and said: "He was not worthy to be eaten; he was worse than a bad dog. We will not taste him, for if we do, we shall be worse than dogs."

As the French began to attack the settlements of New England and New York, the upper Indians offered their services. Governor Beauharnois, under date of the 28th of October, 1745, wrote to the French government: "Sieur de la Corne, the elder, whom I have sent to command at Missilimakinak, wrote to me on the 29th of August last that at that post sixty Outaouacs and Saulteaux applied to him, for M. Noyelle, Jr., who is deputy there, to conduct them to Montreal, in order to attack the English; I have reason to expect them from day to day."

Among the Indians at Ticonderoga with the French army in 1757, with La Plante, De Lorimer and Chésne as interpreter, were thirty-three Ojibways from Chagouamigon, twenty-three of Beaver, fourteen of Coasekimagen, thirty-seven of the Carp, and fifty of Cabibonké.