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  Progress of the Ojibways on the Wisconsin and Chippeway Rivers We have now arrived at a period in the history of the Ojibways, which is within the remembrance of aged chiefs,half-breeds,and traders still living amongst them; and we can promise our readers that but few occurrences will hereafter be related,but the accounts of which have been obtained by the writer from the lips of eye-witnesses,and actual actors therein. From this period, his labors in procuring reliable information have been light,in comparison to the trouble of sifting and procuring corroborative testimony from various sources, the traditions which have been orally transmitted from father to son, for generations past. The greatest trouble will now consist in choosing from the mass of information which the writer has been collecting during several years past, such portions as may truly be considered as historical and worthy of presenting to the world. The important tribe of whom we treat in these pages, is divided into several distinctly marked divisions, occupying different sections of their extensive country, and we have been obliged to skip from one section to another, that we might relate events which have happened to each, in the order of time. In this chapter we will again return to the Lac Coutereille and Lac du Flambeau divisions, whom we left, in a previous chapter, in possession of the sources of the Wisconsin and Chippeway rivers—two large tributaries of the Mississippi. In the latter part of the eighteenth century these two bands already numbered one thousand souls. They had located their villages on the 211 1. In Ojibwe,as in many American Indian languages,specific verb forms and adverbs are used to indicate the source of the speaker’s information, that is, personal witness, second-hand report,or shared tradition (J.Randolph Valentine,personal communication,  May ). It was important to Warren to signify this by explaining that the following stories were told by someone who had actually witnessed the event. 2. The earliest census of these two bands,done by traders’ estimates in ,puts the Lac du Flambeau bands at six hundred and Lac Courte Oreilles at four hundred (Schoolcraft Papers –,reel ). Schenck bk p i-xxiv 1-318_Layout 1 5/13/11 10:54 AM Page 211 beautiful lakes which form the head waters of these rivers, and to some extent they practised the arts of agriculture,raising large quantities of corn and potatoes, the seed for which had been introduced amongst them by their traders on Lake Superior. They also collected each autumn large quantities of wild rice,which abounded in many of their lakes and streams. As game became scarce in the vicinity of their villages,they moved in large hunting camps towards the Mississippi,and on the richer hunting grounds of the Dakotas they reaped rich harvests of meat and furs. The older and more intelligent men of these bands attribute to this day their steady westward advance,and final possession of the country nearly to the Mississippi, through following the example and footsteps of their first and old pioneer trader, Michel Cadotte, a younger brother of J. B. Cadotte,mentioned in previous chapters. The memory of this man, the marks of whose wintering posts are pointed out to this day throughout every portion of the Ojibway country, is still dear to the hearts of the few old chiefs and hunters who lived contemporary with him,and received the benefits of his unbounded charitable disposition.Full of courage and untiring enterprise,he is mentioned to this day as having not only placed the weapons into the hands of the Ojibways whichenabledthemtoconquertheirenemies,butledthemeachwinterwestward and further westward into the rich hunting grounds of the Dakotas, until they learned to consider the country as their own, and caused their enemies to fall back after many a bloody fight west of the “Great River.” He is mentioned as the first trader who wintered amongst the bands who had taken possession of the sources of the Chippeway River.As early as the year , he wintered on the Num-a-ka-gun River, a branch of the St. Croix. The remains of his old post are pointed out a short distance below the portage, which leads towards Lac Coutereille. From this position he secured the trade of both the St.Croix and Chippeway River divisions . From a small outfit of goods which he had procured from the British traders at Michilimackinac, he collected forty packs...

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