A PARTIALLY SCALPED OJIBWAY WOMAN.
Commissioner McKenney, on the 31st of July, went to an island in the St. Louis River opposite the American Fur Company's post, to visit an old woman named Oshegwun, whose career had been quite remarkable. When about fourteen years of age she went with a band of sixty men, women, and children, to the vicinity of the Falls of Chippewa River, which were surprised by the Sioux who rushed down the hillsides and fired into their lodges. Oshegwun ran toward the woods, and was pursued by a Sioux who caught and bound her. Another Sioux then approached and struck her with a war-club, partially scalped her and was about to cut her throat when he was shot. In the contest for the girl each warrior had taken a portion of her scalp, and, while they were disputing, her father came up and killed both. When night came the parent went to the spot where he had seen his daughter, found the pieces of scalp, and by the blood on the snow reached the place to which she had crawled. The daughter survived and lived to have three husbands, all of whom were unkind, and to be the mother of ten children. Her son Okeenakeequid appeared at the council in a Sioux dress, which he obtained at the treaty of Prairie du Chien
weighing from ten to twenty pounds. I have often seen them In the hands of the savages, and as they are superstitious they look upon them as so many divinities, or as presents made to them by the gods who are at the bottom of the lake, to be the cause of their good fortune."
Governor Denonville, of Canada, in 1687 wrote: "I have seen one of our voyageurs, who assures me that some fifteen months ago he saw a lump of two hundred weight as yellow as gold, in a river which falls into Lake Superior. When heated it could be cut with an axe, but the superstitious Indians, regarding this boulder as a good spirit, would not permit him to take any of it away."
La Ronde, the officer in charge at Chagouamigon Bay in 1730, reported that he had received "a fragment of copper weighing eighteen pounds, which in smell, color, and weight resembled the ordinary red copper. This ingot had been brought in by an Indian, but the savages were superstitious as to those discoveries, and would not reveal the locality."
