Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/330

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320
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

prominent actors in all the most important rencontres which occurred between their section of the Ojibways, and the Dakotas.

It was a day of deep mourning amongst their people, when the brave war-chiefs, Yellow Head and Wolf's Father, fell fighting side by side, against immense odds of Dakotas. With a small party of their fellows they had been hunting deer by torchlight, during the hot nights of summer, on the Red Cedar River. During the course of their hunt, being both men "not knowing fear," they had approached too near the haunts of the Dakotas, and being discovered, one morning, while engaged in curing meat at the mouth of Hay River, a large party of the enemy stealthily surrounded and suddenly attacked them. The two war-chiefs escaped the first volley of bullets; and bade the young men, who were with them, to save themselves by flight, while they withstood the attack. Fighting against immense odds, they were at last forced into the river, where, in crossing to an island which lay close to the scene of action. Wolf's Father received a bullet through his brains, while Yellow Head, having reached the shelter of the island, sustained the unequal fight till his ammunition failed him, and the Dakotas, after a severe struggle, gloried in the possession of his long much-coveted scalp. The saying of the people, is, that "on their journey to the land of spirits, these two warriors went well attended by Dakotas, whom they slew at the time of their departure (or death)."

After this occurrence, and the usual levying of war parties, and consequent bloody revenge which followed it, no event of any immediate importance occurred on the Chippeway and Wisconsin Rivers till the year 1808, when, under the influence of the excitement which the Shaw-nee prophet, brother of Tecumseh, succeeded in raising, even to the remotest village of the Ojibways, the men of the Lac Coutereille village, pillaged the trading house of Michel