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CHAPTER XVIII.

 

GRAND EXPEDITION OF THE DAKOTAS TO THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI, AGAINST THE OJIBWAYS.

 

The Dakotas make a grand tribal effort to drive back the Ojibways—Their warriors collect at St. Anthony Falls—They ascend the Mississippi in canoes—They make the circuit of the Upper Mississippi country—Death of the Ojibway hunter, Waub-u-dow—Death of Minaigwatig with his family at Gauss Lake—Death of three boys at Little Boy Lake—Death of an Ojibway hunter near the Falls of Pokeguma—The Dakotas are discovered by two Ojibway hunters—Chase down the Mississippi—Arrival at Sandy Lake—Drunken carouse of the Ojibways—Death of the Ojibway scout—Dakotas capture thirty women while picking berries—They attack the village of Sandy Lake—They are repulsed and proceed down the river—An Ojibway war party discover their marks, and lie in ambuscade at Crow Wing—Preparations for battle—Three days' fight—Dakotas finally retreat and evacuate Rum River County—Dakota legend.

 

After having given, in the two preceding chapters, a summary account respecting the affairs of the Ojibways, attendant on the change from the French to the British supremacy, we will once more return to the northwestern vanguard of the tribe, under the chief Bi-aus-wah, whom we left battling with the fierce Dakotas for the possession of the Upper Mississippi country.

As near as can be judged from their mode of computing time, by events, and generations, it is now^[1] about eighty five years [1768] since the following events occurred, to that portion of the tribe who had located their village at Sandy Lake, and hunted about the sources of the Great River. The incidents to be related, resulted in a fierce battle between the warriors of the two contending tribes, at the confluence of the Crow Wing River with the Mississippi.

1. A.D. 1852.