Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/445

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REPENTIGNY'S FORT.
435

REPENTIGNY'S RECEPTION AT SAULT STE. MARIE.

"The Indians received him at the Sault Ste. Marie with much joy. He kindled my fire in that village, by a necklace, which these Indians received with feelings of thankfulness. He labored first to assure himself of the most suspected of the Indians. The Indian named Cacosagane told him in confidence, that there was a necklace in the village from the English: the said Sieur de Repentigny succeeded in withdrawing that necklace which had been in the village for five years, and which had been asked for in vain until now. This necklace was carried into all the Saulteur villages, and others at the south and the north of Lake Superior, to make all these nations enter into the conspiracy concerted between the English and the Five Nations, after which it was brought and remains at Sault Ste. Marie. Fortunately for us this conspiracy was revealed and had not any consequence. . . . .

REPENTIGNY'S FORT.

"He arrived too late last year at the Sault Ste. Marie to fortify himself well; however he secured himself in a sort of fort large enough to receive the traders of Missilimakinac. The weather was dreadful in September, October, and November. The snow fell one foot deep on the 10th of October, which caused him a great delay. He employed his hired men during the whole winter in cutting 1100 pickets of 15 feet for his fort, with the doublings, and the timber necessary for the construction of three houses, one of them 30 feet long by 20 wide, and two others 25 feet long and the same width as the first. His fort is entirely finished with the exception of a redoubt of oak, which he is to have made 12 feet square, and which shall reach the same distance above the gate of the fort. His fort is 110 feet square.