Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/466

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456
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

survivors having reached the fort, my people went out the next day to the field. A horrid spectacle! My beau-père had his head severed from his body even with the shoulders, his right arm cut off, his left foot, also his right leg from the knee stripped of the skin. The bodies of the women and children all lay within a few yards of each other. Anguemance lay near his wife. The enemy had raised his scalp, cut the flesh from the bone, and broke away the skull to make a water dish. Only the trunk remained, with the belly and breast ripped up and thrown over the face. His wife was also cut up and butchered in a shocking manner, and her young children cut up and thrown about in different directions. All the bodies were covered with arrows sticking in them, many old knives, two or three broken guns, and some war-clubs."[1]

TRADER KILLED AT RED LAKE.

In the spring of 1805, a trader named Hughes was killed at Red Lake by an Ojibway. Henry, under date of 28th of May, writes in his journal: "Le Grande Noir arrived from Red Lake, and his son-in-law, who last spring, at Red Lake, killed an American, by the name of Hughes. The deceased standing by the door, and observing the Indian with a gun, caught a tent-pin, and gave him a blow on the head. The Indian only staggered a few paces, and recovering himself fired his gun and killed Hughes."

  1. Other extracts from MS. Journals of Henry, may be found in Neill's History of Minnesota, 5th edition, 1883, pp. 870–890.