Esh-ke-bug-e-coshe, who has often visited them in his younger days, terms them "relatives;" he describes their earthen wigwams, and says that they are more neat and cleanly than other Indians, from the fact of daily washing their bodies and using a certain kind of clay to whiten their skins. He says also, that formerly they used to raise small quantities of tobacco, the leaf of which, as obtained from them, was considered of great value, and for which their fellow Indians paid large prices. Peace parties of the Knistenos and Ojibways often preceded hundreds of miles to visit their villages, chiefly for the purpose of procuring their much coveted tobacco leaf.

Wa-won-je-quon, the chief of the Red Lake Ojibways, relates that several years since, while on a visit to the earthen wigwams of the Gi-aucth-in-in-e-wug or Gros Ventres, he was informed by their old men, that the smoke of their village once arose in the vicinity of Sandy Lake. They showed him a piece of bark on which was very correctly marked the principal streams and lakes on the Upper Mississippi, and pointed him out, as the site of their former village, the entry of East Savannah River into the St. Louis, where the remains of their earthen lodges, now covered by a forest of trees, are still discernible.

Groups of these mounds are to be seen on all the principal lakes in the Upper Mississippi country. At Pukwah Rice Lake, near Sandy Lake, is a group numbering seventy of these mounds, now covered by a thick grove of maple trees. At the mouth of Pine River, which empties into the Mississippi above Crow Wing, there is a group of nineteen, in which bones have been discovered by the Ojibways.

At Gull Lake, many of these mounds have also been seen by the writer, at one place there are two standing side by side, each over one hundred feet long and four feet high, and on the top of one stands a high pine tree which looks to be centuries old.

The numerous mounds on the shore of Mille Lacs are accounted for in Ojibway tradition, as the remains of the former earthen lodges of the Dakotas, whom their ancestors drove from this lake.

The mounds, which are thickly scattered throughout the St. Croix and Chippeway River region, are said by the Ojibways to be the remains of the former wigwams of their old enemies, the Odugamees.

In the vicinity of some of these mounds on Chippeway River, the writer has distinguished gardens and fields regularly laid out, in which even the rows of corn hills were still plainly discernible, clearly proving that the mounds scattered over this portion of country are not of such ancient origin as some speculative writers would have us believe.

The old men of the Ojibways affirm that nearly all the tribes of the red man who lived in an open prairie country, before the introduction of firearms among them, were accustomed to live in earthen wigwams as a protection and defense against the attacks of their enemies. (Alexander Henry, a partner of the Northwest Company of Montreal, in 1806, visited the Gros Ventres at the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers. From a copy of his MS. Journal, owned by the writer of this note, the following is extracted. "These people, like their neighbors [Mandans], have the custom of washing morning and evening, and wallowing in the mud and clay which here answers the purpose of soap....The huts are constructed as those of their neighbors, with this difference, the ground is dug out about four feet below the surface of the earth, which is much deeper than the others....The inside of the huts are commonly kept clean, and day and night the young men are watching and sleeping upon the roofs. The tops of their huts are particularly level, large, and spacious, about fifty feet in circumference, and so supported by firm, stout, and principal posts which support the square pieces of timber, as to sustain the weight of fifty men."--E. D. N.)

Truly may it be said of all these Indians tribes, that their hand has been against every one, and every one's hand was against them. They have lived in "fear and trembling" of one another, and oft has the sudden midnight attack extinguished forever the fires of their wigwams. And for greater security against these sudden attacks, and continual state of warfare, first originated the earthen remains, over which now the white man's plow peacefully furrows.

From human bones being occasionally discovered in these mounds, most writers have been led to suppose them as the graves or burial places of distinguished chiefs.

The Indians account for them by saying that these former earthen wigwams were seldom evacuated without a struggle, which generally ended in the massacre of the inmates, and the bones now discovered buried within them are the remains of these former occupants.

The few mounds in which have been discovered human bones regularly deposited, in a position facing the west, may probably be considered as burial mounds; though this, too, may be accounted for, from the fact that of later years the Indians have occasionally buried their dead within these mounds, though this may not be considered as a prevalent custom, as they treat all remains of this nature with great respect, as objects consecrated to the memory of by-gone people and by-gone times.

The Ojibways assert in behalf of their tribe, that they have never been forced to live in earthen wigwams as a defense against their enemies, and none of the mounds which are thickly scattered over the country which they at present occupy west of Lake Superior, originate from or are the work of their ancestors. The country in which they have lived for the past five centuries is covered with dense forests, and plentifully supplied with large lakes, on the bosom of which lay islands, where in times of danger they could always pitch their light wigwams in comparative safety.

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