Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/464

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
454
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

Beardash again stopped, faced them, and with his bow and arrows kept them at bay, until his friends got away a considerable distance, when he again ran off to join them. Thus he did continue to manoeuvre, until a spot of strong woods was reached, and the Scieux did no longer follow."

On the 15th of September, 1801, Henry arrived at his post on Pembina River near its junction with the Red River, from his annual trip to the Grand Portage of Lake Superior, and here he found sixty Saulteaux camped, anxiously waiting to taste some new milk, as rum was called, and the next month the chief Le Sucre, and ten other Ojibways from Leech Lake arrived. In January, 1804, Cameron, Cotton, Hesse, and Stitt were trading with the Red Lake Ojibways.

CONFLICT OF SIOUX AND OJIBWAYS A.D. 1805.

On the 3d of July, 1805, the Sioux attacked a band of Ojibways at Tongue River, a few miles from the Pembina trading post. Henry writes in his journal: "Fourteen persons, men, women, and children, were killed or taken prisoners. My beau-père was the first man that fell. He had climbed up a tree to look out if the buffalo were near, about 8 o'clock in the morning. He had no sooner reached the top of the tree when the two Sioux who lay near, discharged their guns, and the balls passed through his body. He had only time to call out to his family, who were in the tent about one hundred paces from him, 'Save yourselves, the Sioux are killing us,' and fell dead.

"The noise brought the Indians out of their tents, and perceiving their danger, ran through the open plains, toward an open island or wood, in Tongue River, about a mile distant. They had not gone more than a fourth of a mile when they saw the main party on horseback, crossing the Tongue River, and in a few moments they began to fire. The four men, by their expert manoeuvres and in-