just above them. Instantly they turned the bow of their canoe up stream, and swiftly stealing along close to the bank they escaped undiscovered, behind the point of the heavy wooded bottom, we have mentioned. Here they met the main party of their fellows, whose canoes nearly covered the broad bosom of the river for half a mile. The scouts threw up the water with their paddles as a signal for them to make for the eastern bank, and this signal being made from canoe to canoe, the warriors soon leaped ashore and pulling their canoes upon the grassy bank, they waited but to rub on their faces and bodies the war paints, ornament their heads with eagle plumes, and secure on their bodies the pe-na-se-wi-ame, or war medicine sack, they rushed on without order through the wooded bottom, and as they emerged one after another on the open prairie, they saw a long line of Dakota warriors, about equal in numbers to themselves, walking leisurely along, following the war path against their villages.
They were out of bullet range from the edge of the wood, but the Ojibway warriors rushed out on the open prairie towards them, as if to a feast, and "first come was to be best served." Their war whoop was bravely answered back by the Dakotas who now, for the first time, perceived them, and bullet was returned for bullet. The warriors of both parties leaped continually from side to side, to prevent their enemies from taking a sure aim; and as they stood confronting one another for a few moments on the open prairie, exchanging quick successive volleys, their bodies in continual motion, the plumes on their heads waving to and fro, and uttering their fierce, quick, sharp battle cry, they must have presented a singular and wild appearance. For a short time only, the Dakotas stood the eager onset of the Ojibways. For, seeing warrior after warrior emerging in quick succession from the wood, in a line of half a mile, they began to think that the enemy many times out-
