came in deadly contact, while engaged in the pursuit of the game whose fur procured them the merchandise of the whites.
Being located in a dangerous neighborhood, the trader had erected a rude fence, or barrier of logs, around his dwelling, and the cluster of Indian wigwams containing the women and children of his hunters, which stood a few rods from his door, were also surrounded with felled trees and brush, as a defence against the sudden midnight attack which at any moment they might expect from the Dakotas. Ten hunters had left their families at the camp some days previous, to go and trap beaver which abounded in the vicinity. One night, long before they were expected back, they startled the inmates of the wigwams and trading house from their quiet slumbers, by their sudden arrival. They reported the approach of two hundred Dakotas, who would doubtless attack the party, as they had ever proved enemies to the whites who traded with the Ojibways, and supplied them with the guns and ammunition which made them such able opponents, and who thus gave them the means and power of possessing their best hunting grounds.
The ten hunters had, the day previous to their sudden arrival at the camp, discovered the trail of the enemy, over which the peculiar odor of their tobacco smoke still lingered, discernible to the keen sense of the hunter's nostrils, denoting that the party had but just passed on the trail. The course of the Dakotas led directly towards a small hunting camp which was perfectly defenceless, and which contained the relatives of the ten hunters, who determined, if possible, to save them from certain destruction. In order to effect their purpose, they concluded to turn the course of the war party towards the trading house, where from behind the defences, they hoped to beat them off, while at the same time the report of their guns would
