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I squatted beside many camp fires in the next week. I sat in the flattened cones of the Chippewas' tepees and smoked innumerable pipes of rank tobacco with the old men. I traded some, but talked more, and at the end of the week I started home. I waited for a pleasant day and a westerly wind, for the small canoe was perilously laden with skins.

Where did they come from? The Jesuit Relation says, from the western shores of Lake Huron, and the Jesuit Fathers knew more about the Algonquin tribes of Canada and the west than all others. All accounts confirm that they were of the same family as the Chippewas and Ottawas. From the head of Lakes Huron and Michigan they were forced to the west and then driven to the south.

He is going into the far Northwest to see if he can bring down the Sacs and Foxes, and even the Ojibways, Chippewas, and Sioux to help against us." "Then why do they take Paul and Jim along?" asked the shiftless one. "As trophies to impress the distant Indians or maybe as a sacrifice. Braxton Wyatt goes, too, because they are his prisoners." "It may be so," said Tom Ross.

We would meet there. Cadillac and the Pottawatamies would come together from the north; the Malhominis, the Winnebagoes, and the Chippewas would come separately, and I would lead the Sacs under my command. All was agreed upon, and I saw the messengers dispatched. Then I took a canoe and eight men, and started on my own journey. It was then past midnight. The eight men worked well.

Soon the loud yells and shrieks from the Indian camp near our house made it evident that the treaty of peace made that afternoon between the Sioux and Chippewas had ended, as all those treaties did, in treachery and bloodshed. The principal men of the two nations had met at the Indian Agency, and in the presence of Major Taliaferro, their "White Father," had made a solemn treaty of peace.

At this time, the Prophet had not more than forty of his own tribe with him; and less than a hundred from others, principally Potawatamies, Chippewas, Ottawas and Winebagoes. The Prophet announced his intention of making a visit to governor Harrison, for the purpose of explaining his conduct, and procuring a supply of provisions for his followers.

It was to be held on the Muskingum, and he sent to the appointed place provisions for the Indians with a guard of men. One day a party of Indians, whose tribe was then unknown, though later they turned out to be Chippewas from the Upper Lakes, suddenly fell on the guard. Their act of treacherous violence had, of course, caused the immediate abandonment of the proposed treaty.

The British held the posts on the lakes; the frontiersmen held the land south of the Ohio. In the wilderness between dwelt the Shawnees, Wyandots, and Delawares, the Wabash Indians, the Miamis, and many others; and they had as allies all the fiercest and most adventurous of the tribes farther off, the Chippewas, the Winnebagos, the Sacs and Foxes.

The L'Anse band of Chippewas, numbering eleven hundred and ninety-five, belong with the other bands of the Chippewas of Lake Superior. They occupy a reservation of about forty-eight thousand three hundred acres, situated on Lake Superior, in the extreme northern part of the State. But few of them are engaged in agriculture, most of them depending for their subsistence on hunting and fishing.

The Chippewas are a numerous people inhabiting the country north of Lake Superior, and about the source of the Mississippi. They are divided into several tribes, and are distinguished by the number of blue or black lines tattooed on their cheeks and foreheads. Travellers have always described them as "the most peaceable tribe of Indians known in North America."