How far the nightly weeping of the dead, which caused this sudden fear and panic, was drawn from the imagination of the wicked inhabitants, or originated in the nightly secret wailings of fond parents for victimized children, we are not able to affirm, certain it is however, that from that time, the Ojibways considered the island as haunted, and never resided on it till after the first old French traders had located and built their trading establishment thereon.
When my maternal grandfather, Michel Cadotte, first built his trading post and resided on the island of La Pointe, seventy years ago, not an Indian dare stop over night on it alone, for fear of the Che-bi-ug, which were even then supposed to haunt it. At that time, however, it is necessary to state that this fear had been lately increased by a bloody tragedy which had occurred among the first French traders who located on the island, as will be hereafter narrated. Mons. Cadotte located on the site of the ancient Ojibway town, and at this time the ground on which had stood their numerous wigwams, and waved their fields of corn, was covered with a comparatively young growth of trees, and the stumps of the ancient pines which they had cut down, were in one spot still plainly discernible.
I have already stated that the old men of the tribe are not over communicative respecting the bad practices of their ancestors, which we have noted in this chapter, yet though backward to mention them, they do not altogether deny the truth of these tales, which I have learned from the lips of old half-breeds and traders, who received the information many years ago, from old men and women whose parents had been actors in the bloody scenes and feasts of this period. I vividly recollect in my childhood while residing on the very spot where these scenes had occurred, that my mother often stilled my importunities
