Here a messenger overtook us to bring to the Ottawwaws the information that Muk-kud-da-be-na-sa, (the black bird,) an Ottawwaw of Waw-gun-uk-ke-zie, or L’Arbre Croche, had arrived from Lake Huron, to call us all home to that country. So we turned back, and one after another fell back, till Wa-ge-tone only was left, and he went on and joined a war-party of Ojibbeways then starting from Leech Lake. A part of this band stopped at the Wild Rice River, and went into the fort, or fortified camp before mentioned. Here they began to hunt and trap, and were heedlessly dispersed about when a large party of Sioux came into their neighbourhood.
Ais-ainse, the Ojibbeway chief, returned one evening from a successful hunt, having killed two elks, and on the following morning, his wife with her young son, started out to dry the meat. They had proceeded a great distance from the lodge when the lad first discovered the Sioux party, at no great distance, and called out to his mother, “the Sioux are coming.” The old woman drew her knife, and cutting the belt which bound the boy’s blanket to his body, told him to run for home with all his strength. She then, with her knife in her hand, ran to meet the approaching war-party. The boy heard many guns, and the old woman was no more heard of. The boy ran long, when, perceiving that his pursuers were near, he lost consciousness; and when he arrived at the fortified camp, still in a state of mental alienation, the Sioux were about one hundred and fifty yards behind him. He vomited blood for some days, and never recovered his health and strength, though he lived about one year afterwards.
Several of the Ojibbeways were hunting in a different direction from that in which the wife of the Little Clam had met the war-party. As soon as the Sioux disappeared from about the fort, young men were sent out, who discovered that they had taken the path of the hunters, and one or two, taking a circuitous direction, reached the Little Clam just as the Sioux were creeping up to fire upon him. A fight ensued, which lasted a long time without loss on either side. At length, one of the Ojibbeways being wounded in the leg, his companions retired a little in order to give him an opportunity of escaping under cover of some bushes, but this movement did not escape the notice of the Sioux. One of their number followed the young man, continuing to elude the notice of the Ojibbeways while he did so, killed him, and took his scalp and medal, he being a favourite son of Aisainse, the Ojibbeway chief. Then returning, he shook these trophies at the Ojibbeways, with some exulting and vaunting words. The enraged father, at sight of the scalp and medal, rushed from his cover, shot down one of the Sioux, cut off his head, and shook it exultingly at the survivors. The other Ojibbeways, being emboldened at this conduct of the Little Clam, rushed forward together, and the Sioux fled.
Another considerable man of the Ojibbeways, who was also named Ta-bush-shish, had been hunting in a different direction, accompanied by one man, and had heard the firing, either where the old woman had been killed, or where Ais-ainse was fighting, and had retured home. The Indians said of him, as, indeed, they often say of a man after his death, that he had some presentiments or forewarnings of what was about to happen. On the preceding evening he had come home, as the Indian hunter often comes, to be annoyed by the tongue of an old wife, jealous of the attentions bestowed on a younger and more attractive one. On this occasion he said to her, “Scold away, old woman, for now I heard you the last time.” He was in the fort when some one arrived who had skulked and fled with the news of the fight the Little Clam was engaged in. Ta-bush-shish had two fine horses, and he said to one of his friends, “Be-na, I believe you are a man. Will you take one of my horses and go with me to see what Ais-ainse has been doing all day? Shall we not be ashamed to let him fight so long, within hearing, and never attempt to give him assistance? Here are more than one hundred of us, who have stood trembling within this camp while our brother has been fighting like a man with only four or five young men to assist him.” They started, and following a trail of the Sioux, it brought them to a place where a party had kindled a fire, and were, for a moment, resting themselves around it. They crept up near, but not thinking this a favourable opportunity to fire, Ta-bush-shish and Be-na went forward on the route they knew the party would pursue, and laid themselves down in the snow. It was now night, but not very dark. When the Sioux began to move, and a number of them came near the place where they had concealed themselves, Ta-bush-shish and Be-na rose up together, and fired upon them, and the latter, as he had been instructed to, instantly fled. When at a considerable distance, and finding he was not pursued, he stopped to listen, and for great part of the night heard now and then a gun, and sometimes the shrill and solitary sah-sah-kwi of Ta-bush-shish, shifting from place to place. At last many guns discharged at the same moment; then the shouts and whoops of the Sioux at the fall of their enemy; then all was silent, and he returned home. These were all that were killed at that time, the old woman, Ta-bush-shish, and the son of Ais-ainse.
It was on the same day, as we afterwards heard, that the war-party from Leech Lake, which Wa-ge-tone had joined, fell upon forty Sioux lodges at the long prairie. They had fought for two days, and many were killed on each side. Wa-ge-tone was the first man to strike a Sioux lodge. Wah-ka-zhe, the brother of Muk-kud-da-be-na-sa, met those Ottawwaws who returned from the Wild Rice River at Lake Winnipeg. He had been ten years in the Rocky Mountains and the country near them, but now wished to return to his own people. He had, in the course of his long life, been much among the whites, and was well acquainted with the different methods of gaining a subsistence among them. He told me that I would be much better situated among the whites, but that I could not become a trader, as I was unable to write. I should not like to submit to constant labour, therefore I could not be a farmer. There was but one situation exactly adapted to my habits and qualifications, that of an interpreter.
He gave us, among other information, some account of a missionary who had come among the Ottawwaws of Waw-gun-uk-kezie, or some of the Indian settlements about the lakes, and urged them to renounce their own religion, and adopt that of the whites. In connection with this subject, he told us the anecdote of the baptized Indian, who, after death, went to the gate of the white man’s heaven, and demanded admittance; but the man who kept watch at the gate told him no redskins could be allowed to enter there. “Go,” said he, “for to the west there are the villages and the hunting grounds of those of your own people who have been on the earth before you.” So he departed thence, but when he came to the villages where the dead of his own people resided, the chief refused him admittance. “You have been ashamed of us while you lived. You have chosen to worship the white man’s God. Go now to his village, and let him provide for you.” Thus he was rejected by both parties.