with desperate bravery; but they could not long resist so many enemies. The combat was short; the carnage bloody and hideous. Old men, women and children fell an easy prey to the cruel Assiniboins. Only two young Blackfeet escaped this shocking butchery. An Assiniboin who participated in the combat gave the recital of it to Mr. Denig, and declared that with his own hand he had killed fourteen children and three women. Mr. Denig asked him if he had killed them all with arrows. " Some of them," answered he; " but failing in arrows, I had recourse to the tomahawk and the dagger." He added, at the same time, that they tore from the arms of their mothers and took with them a great number of little children, and that on their way, amid their songs and the scalp-dances, they amused themselves with flaying them alive and running pointed sticks through their bodies, in order to roast them alive before the fire. The piercing shrieks of these little creatures fell upon the ear of these barbarians, amid their inhuman orgies, like the sweetest and most delightful melody. All that a pitiless and savage heart could invent of torture was put in practice on this occasion. The Assiniboins declare that they satiated themselves with cruelty, to satisfy the manes of their deceased parents and kindred, and their implacable and longwished-for vengeance against the greatest of their enemies, the Blackfeet. The number of scalps taken surpassed greatly the number of heads painted on the drum.
When returning to their own grounds, at the first encampment which they made, one of the warriors remarked, and loud enough for Tchatka's ear, " that the Blackfoot chief had neither been seen nor slain." The chief replied " Our work is not yet finished; we will therefore have an other encounter before repairing to our homes. The Blackfoot chief shall die! I saw him scalped in my dream: such he was painted on the drum by the manitous. His scalp shall be taken from him with his own knife."
A gentle shower fell during the night; a heavy fog obscured the sky during the morning, which obliged the whole