Were accounts of all the acts of treachery after a formal peace, the fights, massacres, and surprises which have occurred during the past century between these two warlike divisions of the Ojibway and Dakotas to be collected and written, they would fill a large volume. In our present work we have space only to give a few characteristic instances, illustrating the nature of the warfare they have waged with one another. Scenes or events, where acts of unusual courage and bravery have been performed by any of their warriors, are long remembered in the tribe, and are related with great minuteness in their winter evening lodge gatherings, for the amusement and benefit of the rising generation.
The following circumstance is one of this nature, which deserves record in the annals of these warlike people:—
One summer about the year 1795, a noted war-chief of Lac Coutereille named "The Big Ojibway," having recently lost some near relatives at the hands of the Dakotas, raised a small war party consisting of twenty-three men, and proceeded at their head towards the West, to revenge the blow on their enemies. They reached the mouth of the Chippeway River without meeting with any fresh signs of the Dakotas. Arriving on the banks of the Mississippi, however, they beheld long rows of lodges on the opposite shore, and from the beating of drums and dancing, which they could hear and perceive was being performed by their enemies, they judged that they were preparing to go to war.
Under this impression, the Ojibway war party laid an ambush at a spot peculiarly adapted for the purpose, by a thick forest of trees which grew to the very banks of the Chippeway River. Scouts were placed at the entry of this stream, directly opposite the Dakota encampment, to watch the departure of the expected war party. Early the
