Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/175

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INTERTRIBAL ADOPTION OF TOTEMS.
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out male issue, and his only daughter married a Dakota chief who belonged to the Wolf Clan of his tribe. He resided among the Ojibways at Rice Lake during the whole course of the peace, and begat by his Ojibway wife, two sons who afterward became chiefs, and who of course inherited their father's totem of the wolf. In this manner this badge became grafted among the Ojibway list of clans.

At this day, Ojibways of the Wolf Totem are numerous on the St. Croix and at Mille Lac, and they are all descended from this intermarriage, and are therefore tinged with Dakota blood. I-aub-aus, present chief of Rice Lake, Shon-e-yah (Silver), chief of Po-ka-guma on Snake River, and Na-guon-abe (Feathers end), chief of Mille Lacs, are direct descendants from the two sons of the Dakota chief and the Ojibway chieftainess.

In like manner Ojibways of the Merman, or Water-spirit Totem, which is a branch of the Awause, married Dakota women, and begat by them sons, who, residing among the Dakotas, introduced in this tribe the badge of their father's totem, and all of this totem among the Dakotas are of Ojibway extraction, and ever since the period of these intermarriages, at every peace meeting of the two tribes, all persons of the Wolf and Merman Totem, in each tribe, recognize one another as blood relations.

The peace on this occasion lasted for several years, and to some extent they learned to speak each other's language. The intermarriages which had taken place between them, proved the strongest link of good-will between them, but the love of war and bloodshed was so inherent in their nature, and the sense of injuries inflicted on one another for centuries past rankled so deep in the breasts of many in each tribe, that even these ties could not secure a long continuance of this happy state of peace and quiet. From a comparative slight cause, the flames of their old hatred again broke forth with great violence. It originated at a