ips of the way, called a council and
proposed to turn back; but the juniors were for pushing on at all risks,
and a young warrior declared that he would rather die than go home
without killing somebody. The result was a division of the party; the
elders returned to Chicago, and the younger men, forty Hurons and thirty
Iroquois, kept on their way.

At last, as they neared the Wisconsin, they saw on an open prairie three
Outagamies, who ran for their lives. The Hurons and Iroquois gave chase,
till from the ridge of a hill they discovered the principal Outagamie
village, consisting, if we may believe their own story, of forty-six
wigwams, near the bank of the river. The Outagamie warriors came out to
meet them, in number, as they pretended, much greater than theirs; but
the Huron and Iroquois chiefs reminded their followers that they had to
do with dogs who did not believe in God, on which they fired two volleys
against the enemy, then dropped their guns and charged with the knife in
one hand and the war-club in the other. According to their own story,
which shows every sign of mendacity, they drove back the Outagamies into
their village, killed seventy warriors, and captured fourteen more,
without counting eighty women and children killed, and a hundred and
forty taken prisoners. In short, they would have us believe that they
destroyed the whole village, except ten men, who escaped entirely naked,
and soon froze to death. They declared further that they sent one of
their prisoners to the remaining Outagamie villages, ordering him to
tell the inhabitants that they had just devoured the better part of the
tribe, and meant to stay on the spot two days; that the tribesmen of the
slain were free to attack them if they chose, but in that case, they
would split the heads of all the women and children prisoners in their
hands, make a breastwork of the dead bodies, and then finish it by
piling upon it those of the assailants.[354]

Nothing is more misleading than Indian tradition, which is of the least
possible value as evidence. It may be well, however, to mention another
story, often repeated, touching these dark days of the Outagamies. It is
to the effect that a French trader named Marin, whom they had incensed
by levying blackmail from him, raised a party of Indians, with whose aid
he surprised and defeated the unhappy tribe at the Little Butte des
Morts, that they retired to the Great Butte des Morts, higher up Fox
River, an