PREFATORY NOTE.
The presentation, in a permanent form, of the history of the Ojibways is appropriate for the Minnesota Historical Society. Two hundred years ago the warriors of this people, by way of the river, in the State of Wisconsin, which still bears their name, sought their foes in the valley of the Mississippi. A century later, they had pushed out the Dakotas or Sioux from their old hunting-grounds in the Mille Lacs region of Minnesota, and at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States of America were trapping, fishing, and making maple sugar on the shores of Red, Leech, and Sandy Lakes. While the Sioux and Winnebago Tribes have been removed to the Valley of the Missouri River, the Ojibways remain on or near certain reservations in Northern Minnesota.
The Society has been fortunate in receiving as a gift, from a former United States Senator, Henry M. Rice, the manuscript history of the Ojibways, based upon traditional and oral statements written by the late William W. Warren, some of whose ancestors had been distinguished chieftains of the tribe, and by its publication hopes to give some aid to the increasing number of students of the aboriginal races of America. Traditions gathered in the wigwams
