shosh-e-mans, or little snow slides, and as no fear of an enemy prevailed in the breasts of their parents, they were allowed to go thither, whenever they listed. One morning, after Yellow Hair had started on his usual day's hunt, and the mother of his children was attending to her within-door duties, a plaintive moaning was heard at the door of the lodge, and the mother, rushing forth, beheld the outstretched form of her oldest boy, painfully crawling homewards through the snow, bleeding and scalpless! The Dakotas had done it! The anguish cry of the mother soon gathered the inmates of the surrounding lodges to her side, and with streaming eyes the women lifted the wounded and mutilated boy into the parents' wigwam—then rushing to the lake on the bloody track which marked his course homewards, they beheld their children, three in number, lying dead and mangled, where the tomahawks of the Dakotas had struck them down.
The Ojibway hunter returned at evening from his day's chase, in time to witness the last death struggle of his murdered boy, his eldest son. He listened to the bloody tale in silence—no tear dimmed his eye, for the feelings which harrowed his heart could not be satisfied with such a vent. The stem of his pipe seldom left his strongly compressed lips the whole of that night, and the vehemence with which he smoked was the only outward sign he gave of his emotions.
Early in the morning, the camp was raised, and they moved in the direction of Leech Lake, taking with them the corpses of the murdered children. When he had reached the village site of his people, and placed the body of his boy in its last resting place, Yellow Hair, with five comrades, returned on his trail to seek the murderers of his child. At Crow Wing they found the Sandy Lake Ojibways still collected, moving but slowly towards their village. It was not difficult for their fellows to divine
