CHAPTER XXV.

The expedition proceeds to strike the source of the great Crow-Wing River, by the Indian trail and line of interior portages, by way of Leech Lake, the seat of the warlike tribe of the Pillagers, or Mukundwa.

Having, while at Sandy Lake, summoned the Indians to meet me in council at the mouth of the _L'aile de Corbeau_, or Crow-Wing River, on the 20th of July, no time was to be lost in proceeding to that place. The 15th, being the Sabbath, was spent at the island, where the Rev. Mr. Boutwell addressed the Indians. The next day, I met the Cass Lake band in council, and, having finished that business, rewarded the Indians for their services and canoes on the trip to Itasca Lake, distributed the presents designed for them, replied to a message from Nezhopenais of Red Lake, and invested Ozawindib with the President's largest silver medal and a flag, and was ready by 10 o'clock A. M. to embark. Dr. Houghton employed the time to complete his vaccinations. I rewarded Mr. Default for taking charge of my camp during the journey to Itasca Lake. As well to shorten the line of travel as to visit an entirely unexplored section of the country, I resolved to pursue the Indian trail and line of interior portages from Cass to Leech Lake, and from the latter to the source of the great Crow-Wing fork.

Passing southwardly across the lake, between Red Cedar and Garden Islands, we have a prolonged bay running deep into the land, toward the south. This bay is in the direct line to Leech Lake; and as it had been crossed on the ice in January, 1806, by Lieutenant Pike, in his adventurous and meritorious journey of exploration, I called it Pike's Bay. It was twelve o'clock, meridian, when we debarked at its head. The portage commenced on the edge of an open pine forest, interspersed with scrub oak. The path is deeply worn, in the sand-plain, and looks as if it had been trod by the Indians for centuries. I observed, as we passed along, the alum root, hyacinthus, and sweet fern, with the ledum latifolium, vaccinium dumosum, and more common species of pine plains. The pinus resinosa assumes here a larger size, and the Indians pointed out to me markings and pictographs drawn with charcoal, and covered with the resin of the tree, which were made by the Indian tribe who preceded them in the occupancy of the sources of the Mississippi. This must have been, if I rightly apprehend their history, prior to A. D. 1600. That such markings should be preserved by the pitch, which sheds the rain, is, however, probable. They were of the totemic character, _i.e._ relating to the exploits or achievements of groups of families, in which the individual actor sinks his specific in the generic family or clan name. Antiquities of this character are certainly a new feature in Indian history. Letters have perfectly preserved the landing of Cartier at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in 1534. Pictography here records, that certain clans had killed bears and taken human scalps before that time. And the fact is deeply important in shedding light on Indian history and character; for the killing of deers and bears, and the taking of human scalps, is precisely what these tribes are doing at the present time. In the three hundred years' interval, they have made no mental progress. The Chippewa is just as fierce to-day, in hunting a Dacota scalp, as the Dacota is in hunting a Chippewa scalp. The conquering tribe has, however, pushed the Dacotas nearly one thousand miles down the Mississippi.

"Talk of your Hannibals, Napoleons, and Alps, My glory," quoth the feathered hunter, "is in scalps."

After following the deeply indented path nine hundred and fifty yards, we reached a small lake which disclosed, as we passed it, patches of a dark, coarse, mossy-like substance at its bottom. On reaching down with their paddles, the men brought up a singular species of aquatic plant with coral-shaped branches. After crossing this lake, the pine plain resumed its former character. There was then a shallow bog of fifty or sixty yards. The rest of the path consists of an arid sand plain, which is sometimes brushy, but generally presents dry, easy travelling. We had walked four thousand one hundred yards, or about two and a half miles, when we reached an elongated body of clear living water, having its outflow into Leech Lake. Embarking on this, we crossed it, and entered a narrow stream, winding about in a shaking savanna, where it was found difficult to veer the large five-fathom canoes in which we now travelled. This tortuous stream was joined by a tributary from the right, and at no remote distance, entered an elongated duplicate body of water, named by the Indians _Kapuka Sagatawag_, or the Abrupt Discharges.[175] Below the junction of these lakes, which appear to be outbursts from the Hauteur de Terre range, the stream is a wide-flowing river. Its shores abound in sedge, reeds, and wild rice. The last glimpses of daylight left us as this broad river entered into Leech Lake. Moonlight still served us, as we began the traverse of this spreading sea, but it soon became overcast, and it was intensely dark before we reached the recurved point of land of the principal chief's village. It was now ten o'clock at night, and it was eleven before the military canoes, under Lieutenant Allen, came up. In the morning a salute was fired by the Indians, who welcomed us. Aishkebuggekozh,[176] or the Flat-mouth, the reigning chief, invited me to breakfast. As this chief exercises a kind of imperial sway over the adjacent country, it was important to respect him. Having sent a dish of hard bread before me, I took my interpreter and went to his residence. I found him living in a tenement built of logs, with two rooms, well floored and roofed, with two small glass windows. At one end of the breakfast-room were extended his flags, medals, and warlike paraphernalia. In the centre of the floor, a large mat of rushes, or Indian-woven _apukwa_ was spread, and upon this the breakfast and breakfast things were arranged in an orderly manner. There were teacups, teaspoons, plates, knives and forks, all of plain English manufacture. A salt-cellar contained salt and pepper mixed in unequal proportions. There were just as many plates as expected guests. A large white fish, boiled, and cut up in good taste, occupied a dish in the centre. There was a dish of sugar made from the acer saccharinum. There were no stools, or chairs, but small apukwa mats were spread for each guest. I observed the dish of hard bread, which came opportunely, as there was no other representative form of bread. The chief sat down at the head of his breakfast, in the oriental fashion. Imitating his example, I sat down with a degree of repose and nonchalance, as if this had been the position I had practised from childhood. His empress--Equa,[177] sat on one side, near him, to pour out the tea, but neither ate nor drank anything herself. Her position was also that of the oriental custom for females; that is, both feet were thrown to one side, and doubled beside her.[178] The chief helped us to fish and to tea, taking the cups from his wife. He was dignified, grave, yet easy, and conversed freely, and the meal passed off agreeably and without a pause, or the slightest embarrassment. This was, perhaps, owing in part to my having been acquainted with him before, he having visited me at my agency at Sault Ste. Marie in 1828, and sat as a guest at my own table. Nor, in a people so loath to give their confidence as the Indian, is the fact undeserving of mention, of general affiliation to the tribe, caused by my marriage with a grand-daughter of the ruling chief of Lake Superior, a lady of refinement and intelligence, who was the child of a gentleman of Antrim, Ireland, where she was educated.

[175] From the word _puka_, abrupt phenomenon, and the verb _saugi_, outflowing.

[176] From _Aizhenagozze_, countenance, and _kozh_, a bill of a bird, or snout of an animal. The word is appropriately translated _guelle_ by the Canadians.

[177] _Equa_, a female; it is not, appropriately, the term of wife, for which the vocabulary has a peculiar term, but is generally employed in the sense of woman.

[178] I have observed this to be the universal custom among all the aboriginal females of America. They never part the feet.

On rising to leave, I invited him to a council, at my tent, which was ordered to assemble at the firing of the military. It is not unimportant to observe, that, in preparing to set out on this expedition into the Indian country, at a time when the Blackhawk had raised the standard of revolt on Rock River, and the tribes of the Upper Mississippi were believed to be extensively in his views, I had caused my canoe, after it had been finished in most perfect style of art known to this kind of vessel, to be painted with Chinese vermilion, from stem to stern. Ten years' residence among the tribes, in an official capacity, had convinced me that fear is the controlling principle of the Indian mind, and that the persuasions to a life of peace, are most effectively made under the symbols of war. To beg, to solicit, to creep and cringe to this race, whether in public or private, is a delusive, if not a fatal course; and though I was told by one or two of my neighbors that it was not well, on this occasion, to put my canoe in the symbolic garb of war, I did not think so. I carried, indeed, emphatically, messages of peace from the executive head of the Government, and had the means of insuring respect for these messages, by displaying the symbol of authority at the stern of each vessel, by an escort of soldiery, and by presents, and the services of a physician to arrest one of the most fatal of diseases which have ever afflicted the Indian race. But I carried them fearlessly and openly, with the avowed purpose of peace. The canoe, itself, was an emblem of this authority, and, like the _oriflamme_ of the Mediæval Ages, cast an auspicious influence on my mission over these bleak and wide summits, lakes, and forests, inhabited alone by fierce and predatory tribes, who acknowledged no power but force. Long before I had reached the sources of the Mississippi, St. Vrain, my fellow agent, had been most cruelly murdered at his agency, and General Scott, with the whole disposable army of the United States, had taken the field at Chicago.

Lieut. Allen paraded his men that morning with burnished arms. We could not, jointly, in an emergency, muster over forty men, of whom a part were not reliable in a melée, but arranged our camp in the best manner to produce effect. Effect, indeed, it required, when the hour of the council came. Not less than one thousand souls, men, women, and children, surrounded my tent, including a special deputation from the American borders of Rainy Lake. Of these, two hundred were active young warriors, who strode by with a bold and lofty air, and glistening eyes, often lifting the wings of my tent, to scan the preparations going forward. Aishkebuggekozh entered the council area, having in his train Majegabowi, the man who had led the revolt in the Red River settlement of Lord Selkirk, and who had tomahawked Gov. Semple, after he fell wounded from his horse. This association did not smack of peaceful designs. The chief, Aishkebuggekozh, himself, has the countenance of a very ogre. He is over six feet high, very brawny, and stout. That feature of his countenance from which he is named Flat-mouth, consisting of a broad expansion and protrusion of the front jaws, between the long incision of the mouth, reminds one much of a bull-dog's jaw. He held in his hand, suspended by ribbons, five silver medals, smeared with vermilion, to symbolize blood.

A person not familiar with Indian symbols, might deem such signs alarming. I knew him to be very fond of using these symbols, and, indeed, a man who never made a speech without them; and I had the fullest confidence that, while he aimed to produce the fullest effect upon his listening, but less shrewd tribe of folks, and upon all, indeed, he never dreamed of an act which should bring him into conflict with the United States. Like Blackhawk, who was now exciting and leading the tribes at lower points to war, he had, from his youth, been in the British interests. He displayed a British flag at his breakfast, and three of his medals were of British coinage, but he was a man of far more comprehensive mind and understanding than Blackhawk.

Having been, as a government agent, the medium of the agreement of the Chippewas and Sioux in fixing on a boundary line for their respective territories at the treaty of Prairie-du-Chien, in 1825, I made that agreement, on the present occasion, the basis of my remarks, for their preserving in good faith the stipulations of that treaty, and of renewing the principles of it in the points where they had since been broken and violated. I concluded by assuring them of the friendship of the United States, of which my visit to this remote region must be deemed proof, and of the sincerity with which I had communicated the words of the President. The presents were then delivered and distributed.

Aishkebuggekozh, or the Guelle Plat, replied, with much of the skill and force of Indian oratory. He began by calling the attention of the warriors to his words; he then turned to me, thanking me for the presents. He said that he had been present when Pike visited this lake in 1806. He pointed with his fingers across the lake, to the Ottertail Point, where the old trading-house of the British Northwest Company had stood. "You have come," he continued, "to remind us that the American flag is now flying over the country, and to offer us counsels of peace. I thank you. I have heard that voice before, but it was like a rushing wind. It was strong, but soon went. It did not remain long enough to choke up the path. At the treaty of Prairie-du-Chien, it had been promised that whoever crossed the lines, the long arms of the President should pull them back; but, that very year, the Sioux attacked us, and they have killed my people almost every year since. I was myself present when they fired on a peaceful delegation, and killed four Chippewas under the walls of Fort Snelling. My own son--my _only_ son--has been killed. He was basely killed, without an opportunity to defend himself." A subordinate here handed him, at his request, a bundle of small sticks. "This," handing them to me, "is the number of Leech Lake Chippewas killed by the Sioux since the treaty of Prairie-du-Chien." There were forty-three sticks.

He then lifted up a string of silver medals, smeared with vermilion. "Take notice, they are bloody. I wish you to wipe the blood off. I cannot do it. I find myself in a war with this people, and I believe it has been intended by the Creator that we should be at war with them. My warriors are brave [looking significantly at them]; it is to them that I owe success. But I have looked for help where I did not find it."[179]

[179] It is hoped, hereafter, to give further sketches of this interview, and of this chief's life and character.