The death of Menaboujou was an important era in the history of the Chippeway nation. During his life the calamities of war and intemperance were unknown, but the Evil One having challenged him to mortal combat, a desperate battle was fought between the mighty potentates, which resulted in the triumph of evil, and the extinction of all good, in the person of its chief author. The battle occurred in the midst of a thunder-storm and on the summit of Thunder Cape, the only weapons used being clubs of immense size, made of the pine and spruce; and when the result was known, a mournful lamentation was heard throughout all the land. The entire Chippeway nation attended the funeral of the departed, and when they were bearing his huge corse to the lake within the nameless island, a rock was seen to rise out of the water, as a monument planted there by the Great Spirit, to perpetuate the memory of the beloved Menaboujou. The rock herein alluded to, rises to the height of about thirty feet, and bears an astonishing resemblance to a human head. I took a drawing of this rock, and look upon it as one of my rarest curiosities.
Generally speaking, the voyager of the northwest is the shipping merchant of the wilderness; for his principal business is to transport furs from the interior county to the frontier settlements, or merchandise from the settlements into the interior. By birth he is half French, and half Indian, but in habits, manners, and education, a full-blooded Indian. Like the Indian, his home is where he may happen to pitch his tent. His usual possessions consist of a good supply of bark canoes, and he ever holds himself in readiness, either to transport goods, or act as a guide and companion to the traveller who may require his services. His dress is something less than half civilized, and his knowledge of the world equal to that of his savage brethren;—amiable even to a fault, but intemperate and without a religion.
It was in a company of some fifty men, composed of voyagers and Indians, and commanded by Allen Morrison, that I performed my pilgrimage to the head waters of the Mississippi, and around the shores of Lake Superior. There were ten canoes in our _fleet_; the largest (about forty feet long) was occupied by Morrison, myself, and five picked men. He was on his annual visit to the north, to attend the Indian payments, and the great majority of the Indians travelled under his flag, partly for the fun of it, but principally for the purpose of drawing upon him for food, which he always dealt out to them with a liberal hand.