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in an Indian Scalp Dance

Wisconsin Business Man Continues Story of His Youth Among the Chippewas of Northern Wisconsin

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from which dangled a Sioux scalp to listen to the visitor's story of his exploit. Above, Mary Warren, daughter of 

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the first manager of the Astor fur station at La Pointe, who lived with the Wheelers

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in the ring that encircled him. As he watched us, we moved closer to him until finally one of us was close enough to let an arrow fly.

Hold firm, strong, brown hands, Look straight eagle eye, Pull on the good cord, And the arrow let fly.

"The rest of us would then rush in sending arrows toward him and about one time in three, we would get the bird.

"In a pasture on father's place in Odanah was a tall totem post. Father was careful to preserve this post and the land about it just as it was, for it was the place where the Indians were accustomed to set up the conjuror's lodge. The spruce trees there were not cut and even the underbrush was preserved. Every once in a while the Indians put up the lodge.

"They used a cabinet, just as the spiritualistic medium does. I have seen the poles to one of these lodges, frozen into the ground, shake and ring bells as a medicine man worked his incantations. The band of Indians camped nearby would come, one by one, to hold communications with their dead.

"Sometimes there would be a Sioux scalp with its long braids placed on top of the totem pole, and there would be dances that circled about it. At such times we boys would be certain to go down to the pasture and join the band. I can hear the rhythmic pounding of the drum today. Suddenly it would cease and into the circle would leap the man who had taken the scalp.

"'I am about to relate an adventure, he would begin, speaking slowly and acting out every sentence. 'This adventure happened up the current of the Minnesota river, where it makes the great bend.'

"We understood by this that he was speaking of Granite Falls.

"'So high hung the sun,' he continued, raising his arm expressively, 'when I started on the particular adventure that I am about to relate. At the end of 10 days did I reach the great bend, and ...' the speaker was becoming excited as he enacted his story.

"'On the following morning as I ran through the grass, crouching low on the other side of the river, suddenly upsprung a strange Indian. He was a Sioux.' The speaker now acted not only his own movements but those of his adversary.

"'As we drew near to each other and while he tried to brain me with his tomahawk, did I drop the hammer of my trusty flintlock upon him. And even in his death struggle did I shear him! Sound the drum!'

"If this was the first scalp the Indian had taken he would say, 'This is why I am too worthy to wear the eagle feather.'

"I remember hearing one Indian tell about meeting a Sioux, 'floating in his canoe, unsuspicious,' and of how he '"blew his enemy's head off."'

"But," he went on to say, 'in the water he looked at me and laughed, brave even in his death struggle.' The recital usually tended to prove the bravery of the one whose scalp had been taken, because this enhance the quality of the deed.

"Father sent one of these Sioux scalps to the headquarters of the American board in Boston so that they might understand the type of people he was trying to help. And years later I went up to the rooms of the missionary society and there, among the idols from India, I saw the Sioux scalp with its long black braids.

"I never saw Indians dancing around a white man's scalp. The Chippewa's were allies of the white man from the first.

"The year that I was born, Mary Warren, a girl of 11, came to live with us. She was a daughter of Lyman Warren, who was instrumental in persuading the American board to send the first missionary to Madeleine island and was the first manager of the Astor company at La Pointe. Before his death Mr. Warren asked father to take Mary.

"The Warrens, Lyman and Truman, were Berkshire Hills boys who came to Madeleine island in 1810. They married daughters of Michel Cadotte, the last of the old French fur traders. The grandfather of the Cadotte girls was White Crane, a famous Ojibway chieftain.

"Thus Mary Warren, by inheritance, was connected with every phase of Madeleine island history and life. She was sent to an Ohio college, and became a missionary to the Indians at Odanah Red Cliff, Wis., and at Red Lake, Leech Lake and White Earth, Minn., where she died only three years ago.

"Father carried on an unremitting warfare against those who were perpetually trying to take the Indian's land from him. Very soon after the Bad River reservation was established, a group of politicians tried to get hold of the pine on the 'school sections' - sections 16 and 36 in every township

"This land is specifically reserved for the support of schools. It was said that these sections did not belong to the Indians at all. The case was carried to the supreme court for the Indians. That court decided that on reservations there was no such thing as 'school lands,' that every inch of the reservation belonged to the Indians.

"In 1859 came father's trip to Washington to save the Court Oreilles reservation from the Indian ring, when he travelled 350 miles on snow shoes through a blizzard to catch a train at Sparta. He was none too early either, for when he arrived in Washington the bill had been advanced to the third reading.

"Father asked for and obtained an interview with President Buchanan, with the result that the bill was wiped off the map. His trip saved the reservation for the Indians but lost him his life. In two months he had lost the use of the right lung. He was never well again."

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[To Be Concluded In The Journal Magazine Next Sunday]






Transcription Notes:
This is the right hand page of a double page spread in a newspaper. Some paragraphs and captions are incomplete as they are spread across both pages