Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/284

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
274
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

more my young as I once beheld him, and I return not on my tracks till I am satisfied!"

The Dakotas, thinking that he wished for a captive to adopt instead of his deceased child, and happy to escape certain destruction at such a cheap sacrifice, took one of the surviving children, a little girl, and decking it with such finery and ornaments as they possessed, they sent her out to the covert of the Ojibway warrior. The innocent little girl came forward, but no sooner was she within reach of the avenger, than he grasped her by the hair of the head and loudly exclaiming—"I sent for thee that I might do with you as your people did to my child. I wish to behold thee as I once beheld him," he deliberately scalped her alive, and sent her shrieking back to her agonized parents.

After this cold-blooded act, the fight was renewed with great fury. Yellow Hair rushed desperately forward, and by main force he pulled down one of the Dakota lodges. As he did so, the wounded warrior, his former adopted brother, discharged his gun at his breast, which the active and wary Ojibway adroitly dodging, the contents killed one of his comrades who had followed him close at his back. Not a being in that Dakota lodge survived; the other, being bravely defended, was left standing; and Yellow Hair, with his four surviving companions, returned homeward, their vengeance fully glutted, and having committed a deed which ever after became the topic of the lodge circles of their people.