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The Sandy Lake band of Ojibways in February, 1833, sent out sixty warriors, under Songegomik, a young chief, who found nineteen teepees of the Sioux, and in the night surrounded them. Before sunrise the next day, the Ojibways opened fire, and without any injury to themselves, killed nineteen, and wounded forty of the Sioux. In retaliation a war party of about one hundred Sioux was formed, which attacked a fortified camp of Mille Lacs and Snake River Ojibways, and killed nine men and one woman.

On the 2d of July, 1836, a distinguished French astronomer, J.N. Nicoley or Nicollet (Nicolay), arrived in the steamboat Saint Peter at Fort Snelling, to explore the Upper Mississippi under the direction of the United States government, and left the fort on the 27th, for the sources of the Mississippi. He reached Leech Lake in August, and when the Pillager Ojibways found that he was only a poor scholar, with neither flour, nor beef, nor tobacco to give away, and constantly peeping through the tube of a telescope, they became very rude. The Rev. W.T. Boutwell, whose mission house was on the opposite side of the lake, hearing the shouts and drumming of the Indians, came over to the relief of Nicollet, who writes: "On the fourth day he arrived, and although totally unknown to each other previously, a sympathy of feeling arose growing out of the precarious circumstances under which we were both placed, and to which he had been much longer exposed than myself. This feeling from the kind attentions he paid me, soon ripened into affection and gratitude."