Many of these songs are noted down by a method probably peculiar to the Indians, on birch bark, or small flat pieces of wood, the ideas being conveyed by emblematic figures somewhat like those before mentioned, as used in communicating ordinary information.
Two years previous to this time, a man of our band called Ais-kaw-ba-wis, a quiet and rather insignificant person, and a poor hunter, lost his wife by death, and his children began, even more than formerly, to suffer of hunger. The death of his wife was attended with peculiar circumstances, and Ais-kaw-ba-wis became melancholy and despondent, which we attributed to the sluggishness of his disposition, but he at length called the chiefs together, and with much solemnity announced to them that he had been favoured by a new revelation from the Great Spirit. He showed them a round ball of earth, about four or five inches in diameter, or more than half as large as a man’s head, rolled round and smooth, and smeared with red paint. “The Great Spirit,” said he, “as I sat, from day to day, crying, and praying, and singing in my lodge, at last called to me, and said, ‘Ais-kaw-ba-wis, I have heard your prayers, I have seen the mats in your lodge wet with your tears, and have listened to your request. I give you this ball, and as you see it is clean and new, I give it to you for your business to make the whole earth like it, even as it was when Na-na-bush first made it. All old things must be destroyed and done away; every thing must be made anew, and to your hands, Ais-kaw-ba-wis, I commit this great work.’”
I was among those whom he called in to listen to this first annunciation of his mission. It was not until after he dismissed us that I said any thing, but then, in conversation with my companions, I soon betrayed my want of credulity. “It is well,” said I, “that we may be made acquainted with the whole mind and will of the Great Spirit at so cheap a rate. We have now these divinely taught instructors springing up among ourselves, and fortunately, such men as are worth nothing for any other purpose. The Shawnee prophet was far off. Ke-zhi-ko-we-ninne and Manito-o-geezhik, though of our own tribe, were not with us. They were also men. But here we have one too poor, and indolent, and spiritless, to feed his own family, yet he is made the instrument, in the hand of the Great Spirit, as he would have us believe, to renovate the whole earth.” I had always entertained an unfavourable opinion of this man, as I knew him to be one of the most worthless among the Indians, and I now felt indignant at his attempt to pass himself upon us as a chosen and favoured messenger of the Supreme Spirit. I hesitated not to ridicule his pretensions wherever I went, but notwithstanding that bad luck constantly attended him, he gained a powerful ascendancy over the minds of the Indians. His incessant beating of his drum at night scared away the game from our neighbourhood, and his insolent hypocrisy made him offensive to me at all times, but he had found the way to control the minds of many of the people, and all my efforts in opposition to him were in vain.
On one occasion, while we remained at this place, and had been suffering some days from hunger, I went out to hunt and wounded a moose. On my return, I related this, and said I believe the moose was so badly wounded that he must die. Early next morning, Ais-kaw-ba-wis came to my lodge, and with the utmost seriousness in his manner, said to me that the Great Spirit had been down, and told him of the moose I had wounded. “He is now dead,” said he, “and you will find him in such a place. It is the will of the Great Spirit that he should be brought here and cooked for a sacrifice.” I thought it not improbable that the moose was killed, and went in search of him accordingly, but I found he was not dead. This afforded me another opportunity to ridicule the pretensions of Ais-kaw-ba-wis, but all seemed in no degree to impair the confidence of the Indians. Very shortly afterwards, it happened that I again wounded a moose, and went home without getting it. “This,” said Ais-kaw-ba-wis, “is the moose which the Great Spirit showed me.” So I went out and brought him in, and as I knew many of the Indians were hungry, I was willing to make a feast, though not out of deference to Ais-kaw-ba-wis. As we were too few in number to consume all the meat, we cut it off the bones, and these were heaped up before Ais-kaw-ba-wis, care being taken that not one of them should be broken. They were afterwards carried to a safe place, and hung up out of the reach of the dogs or wolves, as no bone of an animal offered in this way must, by any means, be broken. On the following day, I killed another fat moose, on which occasion Ais-kaw-ba-wis made a long address to the Great Spirit, and afterwards said to me, “You see, my son, how your goodness is rewarded. You gave the first you killed to the Spirit. He will take care you shall not want.” Next day I went with my brother-in-law, and we killed each one, and now Ais-kaw-ba-wis exulted much in the efficacy of the sacrifice he had caused me to make, and his ascendancy over the superstitious minds of the Indians was confirmed. Notwithstanding this high degree of favour he had obtained by his cunning, he was a man who, once in his life, had eaten his own wife for hunger, and whom the Indians would then have killed as one unworthy to live.
When the snow began to harden on the top at the approach of the spring, the men of our band, Sha-gwaw-koo-sink, Wau-zhe-gaw-maish-koon, Ba-po-wash, Gish-kau-ko, myself and some others, went to make a hunting camp at some distance for the purpose of making dry meat, and left only Ais-kaw-ba-wis at home with the women. We killed much game, as it is very easy to take moose and elk at that season. The crust on the snow, while it will bear a man, almost deprives them of the power of motion. At length, Gish-kau-ko went home to see his family, and on his return he brought me a little tobacco from Ais-kaw-ba-wis, with this message. “Your life is in danger.” “My life,” said I, “belongs neither to Ais-kaw-ba-wis nor myself. It is in the hands of the Great Spirit, and when he sees fit to place it in danger, or bring it to an end, I shall have no cause to complain, but I cannot believe that he has revealed any part of his intentions to so worthless a man as Ais-kaw-ba-wis.” But this intimation alarmed all the Indians who were with me, and they made the best of their way to the place where Ais-kaw-ba-wis was encamped with the women. I took a circuitous route by myself to visit some of my traps, and having caught an otter, I took him on my back, and arrived at home some time after them. Here I found all our lodges converted into one large one. The women and children together with the men who had arrived long before me, were shivering with cold by a fire in the open air. When I inquired the meaning of all this, they told me that Ais-kaw-ba-wis was preparing for some important communication to be given through him from the Great Spirit. He had been a long time in preparing the lodge, during which every one was excluded, and he had arranged that at a certain signal Ba-po-wash, who was to lead the dance, should enter, and the others were to follow him, and after having danced four times around the lodge, to sit down, each in his place. Hearing this, I immediately entered the long lodge, and throwing down my otter, seated myself by the fire. Ais-kaw-ba-wis gave me one angry and malicious look, then closed his eyes, and affected to go on with a prayer that I had interrupted. After some time, he began to drum and sing aloud, and at the third interval of silence, which was the signal agreed upon with Ba-po-wash, the latter came dancing in, followed by men, women, and children, and after circling the lodge four times, they all sat down in their places. For a few moments all was silence, while Ais-kaw-ba-wis continued sitting with his eyes closed, in the middle of the lodge, by a spot of smooth and soft ground which he had prepared, like that used by the war chiefs in their Ko-zau-bun-zitch-e-kun. Then he began to call the men, one by one, to come and sit down by him. Last of all, he called me, and I went and sat down as he directed. Then addressing himself to me, he said, “Shaw-shaw-wa ne-ba-se, my son, it is probable you will now be frightened, as I have very unpleasant information to give you. The Great Spirit has, as you, my friends, all know, in former times favoured me with the free communication of his mind and will. Lately he has been pleased to show me what is to happen to each of us in future. For you, my friends, (to Sha-gwaw-go-nuck and the other Indians,) who have been careful to regard and obey the injunctions of the Great Spirit, as communicated by me, to each of you he has given to live to the full age of man; this long and straight line is the image of your several lives. For you, Shaw-shaw-wa ne-ba-se, who have turned aside from the right path, and despised the admonitions you have received, this short and crooked line represents your life. You are to attain only to half of the full age of man. This line, turning off on the other side, is that which shows what is determined in relation to the young wife of Ba-po-wash.” As he said this, he showed us the marks he had made on the ground, as below. The long, straight line, A, representing, as he said, the life of the Indians, Sha-gwaw-koo-sink, Wau-zhe-gaw-maish-koon, etc. The short crooked one, B, showing the irregular course and short continuance of mine, and the abruptly terminating one on the other side, showing the life of the favourite wife of Ba-po-wash. It happened that Ba-po-wash had dried the choice parts of a fat bear, intending in the spring to make a feast to his medicine, and a few days previous to this time, while we were absent at our hunting camp, Ais-kaw-ba-wis had said to the old woman, the mother of Ba-po-wash’s wife, “The Great Spirit has signified to me that all things are not as they should be. Send out and see, therefore, if the fat bear which your son has hung up for a feast to his medicine is all where it was left.” She went out accordingly, and found that the feet of the bear were gone, Ais-kaw-ba-wis himself, who was a great glutton, having stolen them. This was now made known to Ba-po-wash, who was much alarmed at the threatened evil, and to avert it he not only gave Ais-kaw-ba-wis the remainder of the bear, but a large quantity of marrow he had saved for his feast, and other valuable presents.
After this, we started to come to an island called Me-nau-zhe-taw-naun, in the Lake of the Woods, where we had concluded to plant corn, instead of our old fields at Dead River. On our way we stopped at a place to make sugar, then we went to visit the traders, leaving Ais-kaw-ba-wis with our women. It happened that the wife of Gish-kau-ko had left her kettle at the sugar camp, some distance from the place where they were to wait for our return. Some time after the men had gone, Ais-kaw-ba-wis, who lived by himself in a little lodge, pretending to be too holy to go into a common house, or to mingle with men in their ordinary pursuits, sent for the wife of Gish-kau-ko, and when she came to him, he said, “The Great Spirit is not pleased that you should abandon and lose your property. Go, therefore, and get the kettle that you have left at the sugar camp.” The woman obeyed, and he, soon after she had left the camp, took his gun, and under the pretence of going to hunt, went out in a different direction. But he had no sooner got out of sight of the lodges than he turned, and by circuitous route came upon the track of the wife of Gish-kau-ko. She, who had been before annoyed by his particular attentions, and surmised the real object he had in view in sending her for the kettle, kept a look out behind her, and when she saw him come running after her, she began to run also. Just at this time I was returning from the trading-house with the other Indians, when we descried this chase at a distance. It occasioned us much alarm when we saw first a woman, then a man, running with so much apparent earnestness. We thought nothing less than that the Sioux had come to the country, and were murdering our women and children. But when we came a little nearer, the pretended prophet gave over his pursuit of the woman, and came and sat down with us, to drink of the rum which the Indians had brought from the trading-house, and which they gave him very liberally. The woman was, however, after her arrival at home, compelled to give some account of the race, and she acknowledged that Ais-kaw-ba-wis had often sought similar opportunities to be alone with her, though such was her fear of him that she never dared make any disclosure, or offer any other resistance than an attempt to escape by flight. This discovery occasioned no disturbance, and seemed in no degree to diminish the influence of Ais-kaw-ba-wis. A large proportion of the rum we had brought from the trading-house was set apart for him, but when the principal man among us sent for him to come and receive it, he returned for answer, that he could not come. “Tell the chief,” said he, “that if he has any business with me, he can come to my lodge.” The liquor was accordingly carried to him, but its effect seemed to render his disposition somewhat more social and condescending, for about the middle of the night he came staggering into the lodge where I was without the least covering on any part of his body. To me his appearance was ludicrous in the extreme, and I did not refrain from a good deal of irreverent merriment on the occasion.
After this we came to the Lake of the Woods, where I hunted for about a month, then went back into the country I had left, all the Indians remaining behind to clear the ground where they intended planting corn at Me-nau-zhe-tau-naung. I now began to experience the inconveniences resulting from having incurred the ill will of Ais-kaw-ba-wis. He it was who prejudiced the Indians so much against me, and particularly the relatives of my wife, that my situation at Me-nau-zhe-tau-naung was uncomfortable, and I was compelled to return to Red River.
It was about this time that the Scots people, to the number of one hundred or more, arrived to settle at Red River, under the protection of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and among these I saw, for the first time in many years, since I had become a man, a white woman. Soon after my arrival, I was taken into the employment of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Mr. Hanie, the agent, sent me, accompanied by Mr. Hess, an interpreter, and some men, to kill buffalo. The buffalo were at that time, at a great distance, and the Scots people in great distress for want of provisions. I happened to find and kill two bulls near home, and after sending back the meat, I went on to the herds.
I had hunted here a few days, when our number was increased to four clerks and about twenty men, the latter employed in bringing in the meat I killed to my lodge, whence it was carried in carts to the settlement. All of these lived in my lodge, but one of the clerks named M’Donald was very abusive to my wife and children. Mr. Hess repeatedly checked him for this conduct, but as he continued it, he complained to Mr. Hanie, who sent M’Donald to a place several miles distant where the Indians had killed about twenty buffaloes, which it was not convenient, at present, to bring out, and there he remained by himself for two months, having no other occupation or amusement than to scare the wolves away from the meat. Mr. M’Kenzie was one of the three remaining clerks who lived in my lodge, and he was so different from M’Donald, that at the end of four months, when the greater part of the people were called in to the settlement, he solicited and obtained from Mr. Hanie permission to remain longer with me, to improve himself in the Ojibbeway language, and he did not leave me until after the sugar season.