spot where they had encamped. Scouts were sent to reconnoitre the noisy party, whom they supposed to be traders proceeding up the lake to trade with their people.
"These scouts soon returned on a run, and informed their party that they had seen a large war party of Naud-o-ways, who were encamped, drinking firewater, and carousing with perfect carelessness, and apparently with every sense of security. The Ojibways quickly extinguished their blazing fires, and making their usual preparations for a desperate fight, they noiselessly approached and surrounded the encampment of their boisterous and drunken enemies. They silently awaited the moment when nearly all had drunk themselves insensible, and the remainder had fallen asleep, for the war whistle to sound the onset. They attacked them with great fury, and it is said that but few of the Naud-o-ways escaped the Ojibways' tomahawk and scalping knife on this bloody occasion."
The "Six Nations" never after this made incursions into the country of the Lake Superior Ojibways, and from this occurrence may be dated the ending of the long and fierce warfare which these two people had been waging against one another.[1]
The French always favored the Ojibway and other Algic tribes in their war with the New York tribes, and for this, they often suffered at the hands of the Iroquois, who waylaid their canoes laden with merchandise on the route up the Great Chain of Lakes.
For providing the Ojibways also with fire-arms, and through this causing them to become too powerful for their western enemies, the French incurred the dislike and hatred of the Dakota and O-dug-am-ee tribes, who on one occasion made their deep enmity evident, by making war
- ↑ Perrot gives a history of this conflict. See Memoirs edited by Tailhan, pp. 97, 98.—E.D.N.
