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Rh parents upon the island heard the death cries of their children. Their fathers, burning for revenge, left the island in a canoe, and drawing it upon the shore of the lake, hid behind it, opened fire upon and killed one of the Sioux. The Sioux approaching, they again launched the canoe, one lay on his back at the bottom, the other plunged into the water, and holding the canoe with one hand, and swimming with the other, he pushed the canoe beyond the reach of the foe. As the Sioux would aim at him he dodged their shot, by putting his head under water, and waiting until he heard the discharge of their guns. After a skirmish of two hours, the Sioux, numbering over one hundred retreated, having lost two men.

At the request of the parent Mr. E.F. Ely, the catechist of the mission, went across the lake with two of his friends to collect the mutilated remains of his pupils. He found their heads cut off and scalped, with a tomahawk buried in the brains of each. Their bodies were pierced in the breast, and the right arm of one was broken away. Removing the tomahawks, he brought the bodies to the island, and in the afternoon they were buried with the simple and solemn rites of Christianity.

In June, 1842, an Ojibway war party of about forty was formed at Fond du Lac in the valley of the St. Louis River, and appeared at the marsh below what is now the city of Saint Paul, and opposite to the Kaposia village of Sioux, of which Big Thunder was chief, and killed a Sioux, the wife of Gamelle a Canadian, and another woman and child. The Sioux warriors came over from the other side, and they lost ten men, and one known as the Dancer was horribly mutilated, while the Ojibways had only four killed.