ways assert as a proof of this tradition, that whenever they have dug into these mounds, which they occasionally do, they have discovered human bones in great abundance and lying scattered promiscuously in the soil, showing that they had not been regularly buried, but were cut in pieces and scattered about, as Indians always treat those they slay in battle.
It is as well to state here, that some of the old men who relate this tradition, give the name of O-maum-ee to the former dwellers of Mille Lacs, and they further assert that these people were totally exterminated on this occasion. The more intelligent affirm that they were the Ab-oin or Dakotas, who having their principal village on a peninsula, or Min-a-waum, were known in those days by the name of O-maum-ee. This, connected with the fact afforded us by the early French explorers, Hennepin, Du Luth and Le Sueur, that the Mdé wakantons were former dwellers of Mille Lacs, is sufficient to prove the identity of the people whom the Ojibways drove from its possession.
Ojibway tradition further states that the Dakotas who had been driven from Mille Lacs, made another village on Rum River, and that they did not finally leave this region of country[1] till about the year 1770, after their great expedition or war party to the head-waters of the Mississippi, which resulted in the battle of Crow Wing, as will be related in a future chapter.
- ↑ The Mdé wakanton Sioux used to assert that about the year 1780, they lived in one village, on the banks of the Minnesota, a short distance above Mendota.—E.D.N.
