MIGRATIONS—ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 175 
river in a small birch-bark canoe. At the falls, which Hennepin named 
St. Anthony, for his patron saint, they made a portage and saw half a dozen 
Dakotas, who had preceded them, offering buffalo-robes in sacrifice to 
Unktehi, the great water god. 
As they paddled leisurely down the stream by the beautiful bluffs in 
this month of July, now and then shooting a wild turkey or a deer, they 
were suddenly overtaken by Hennepin’s Dakota father, the old savage 
Akepagiday, with 10 warriors in a canoe. The white men were somewhat 
alarmed, for he told them he was going down to the mouth of the Wisconsin 
to meet the traders, who were to be there according to the words of the 
Franciscan. They passed on rapidly, found no one at the place named, 
and, in a few days, they met them on their return, when the savage father 
only gave his son Hennepin a good scolding for lying. 
They were then near the mouth of the Chippewa River, a short dis- 
tance up which a large party of those with whom they had started were 
chasing buffalo. This information was given to the white men by the 
Indians as they passed up. Hennepin and Du Gay had but little ammuni- 
tion, and for this reason they determined to turn aside and join the buffalo 
hunt. In this party they found their former comrade. A grand hunt was 
made along the borders of the Mississippi. The Dakota hunters chased the 
buffalo on foot and killed them with their flint-headed arrows. At this 
time they had neither guns nor horses. When they first saw the white 
men shoot and kill with a gun they called it “ maza-wakay,” mysterious 
iron. And, in after years, when the horse came to their knowledge they 
called it “shuyka wakay,” mysterious dog. 
While they were thus killing the buffalo and drying the meat in the 
sun there came two Dakota women into camp with the news that a Dakota 
war party, on its way to Lake Superior, had met five “ spirits ”—washe- 
chooy.' These proved to be Daniel Greysolon Du Luth with four well-armed 
Frenchmen. In June they had started from Lake Superior, had probably 
ascended the Burnt Wood River, and from that made a portage to the St. 
Croix, where they met this war party and learned that three white men 
were on the Mississippi. As this was Du Luth’s preempted trading country, 
he was anxious to know who the interlopers were, and at once started for 
the hunting camp. We can imagine this to have been a joyful meeting of 
Frenchmen. 
The hunt was now over. The Indians, laden with dried meat and 
ace ecompanied by the eight Ww hite men, returned to thei ir resting plac we at it Knite 


1 W: asicun. 
