NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 255 



to tliis 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 neigh- 

 bors 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 fear- 

 lessly and openly, with the avowed purpose of peace. The canoe, 

 itself, was an emblem of this authority, and, like the orifiamme 

 of the Mediaeval 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 Missis- 

 sippi, St. Train, 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 melee, 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 

 Eainy 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 for- 

 ward. 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 expan- 

 sion 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 



