added: " I repeat to you, my hour is come - my manitous call me - I have seen them in my dream - I must depart! Yes, to-morrow my spirit will take flight into the land of ghosts! " In the evening he took a good supper, and slept peacefully after, while the other Indians amused themselves during the whole night. On the morrow, Tchatka presented himself once more at the office of Mr. Denig, and had a slight spitting of blood. They tried to make him take some remedy, but he refused, saying: " All is useless - henceforth life is insupportable to me - I will and I must die - I have told you so." A lithe time after, he left the fort with the other Indians, and went to the margin of the river. He soon had a second attack, more violent than the first. They placed him on a sleigh, intending to transport him to the Indian camp, but he died on the way, in the most terrible convulsions. It was, according to all appearances, the same " grand medicine " which he had administered on a great number of occasions to his unfortunate victims, during his sad and long administration as chief, that at last terminated his own career.
The lifeless body of this too famous chief was carried in great ceremony into the Indian village, twenty-two miles distant from the fort. The whole tribe assisted at his obsequies. The corpse, after being painted, ornamented with their richest decorations, and wrapped in a scarlet-colored blanket and a beautiful buffalo-robe embroidered with porcupines' quills, was at last elevated and fastened between two branches of a large tree, amid the tears, cries and lamentations of the multitude.
Such was the ascendency that his name and deeds exerted over the minds of the whole Assiniboin tribe, that the place where his mortal remains repose is at the present day an object of the highest veneration. The Assiniboins never pronounce the name of Tchatka but with respect. They
is En port-epic is the term of the voyageurs. The long quills of the animal resemble those of a bird, and are stripped off by the women in threads, for embroidering.-Author's Note.