Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/511

Rh Missionary J.P. Bardwell, of Cass Lake, in his report to the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, refers to the most shocking case of cannibalism that he ever heard of.

An Indian west of Cass Lake, with his wife, and two daughters, and son-in-law, had killed and eaten fifteen persons, most of whom were their own children and grandchildren. A writer in the Minnesota Democrat, under date of July 29, 1851, gives a more particular account. He writes: "They were reduced to a starving condition, and the mothers commenced killing and eating their children. They fed voraciously upon the flesh, and became passionately fond of it." After all of the children had been despatched but a boy of eighteen years, "in the latter part of winter, his mother called him to her, and requested him to put his head in her lap, under pretence of desiring to look for vermin. The boy complied. The mother had some molten lead which she poured into his ear, and killed him. His cries of agony alarmed the old people. The old man told his wife to go and see what was the matter. She went and looked into the door of the lodge, and there saw the woman with the body of the boy on the fire, singeing his hair off. She said to her 'come in and get some; it is good.

On the 9th of April, 1853, a party of Ojibways killed a Sioux, at Shakopee, and then Sioux from Kaposia killed an Ojibway in the valley of the Saint Croix River.

On the morning of the 27th, some Ojibways could have been seen lurking on the elevation, behind the marsh in Saint Paul, now filled with railways and warehouses. Perceiving a canoe of Sioux coming up the river from Kaposia, they hurried to the neighborhood of Third and Jackson Streets, and saw the Sioux land from their canoe, walk up Jackson Street, and go into a trading house, which