Volume 1

THE MERRY, MERRY MONTH OF MAY. 257
toward their employers, and lavish with the propertycommitted
to their charge. I am confident that another
year could not have passed without bloodshed between ourselves
and the Saulteurs.
This would certainly have caused
a critical situation, as those fellows are all so connected
that to injure one is to injure the whole. Of this I was
well aware, and always avoided pushing matters to extremities,
at the same time not allowing myself to be imposed
upon.
In the month of May all the Indians were camped at our
fort, drinking and making the grand wabbano
; they were as
troublesome and extravagant as usual, the principal cause
of which was my neighbor. Crebassa persisted in telling
them that the report concerning the coalition was false, and
that next year the X. Y. would be stronger than ever, with
double the number of canoes, etc. In this manner he
played the cheat to the last moment, when he was obliged
to send all the remainder of his property, utensils, horses,
and summer men over to my fort, on the embarkation.
The consequence of this mean dissimulation was that he
got himself despised by the natives, and in the end had a
narrow escape for his life from Pegouisse,^ who certainly
would have murdered him had I not interfered.
Fifteen tents of Assiniboines followed Mr. Langlois from
the hills this spring and encamped at my fort with the Saulteurs.
In the first drinking match a murder was committed
in an Assiniboine tent, but fortunately it was done by a
Saulteur. L'Hiver stabbed Mishewashence to the heart
* No. II of the list, p. 53, no doubt the identical Indian Tanner calls Begwa-is.
Thus, p. 161 :
" I joined some Red River Ojibbeways, under a chief
called Be-gvva-is, (he that cuts up the beaver lodge.)"
Again, " our friend Begwa-is,"
" a kind, good man," had his no.se bitten off— inadvertently, it would
seem, from Tanner's account, p. 165— by Tanner's brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew,
whose own nose had just been bitten off by old Ta-bush-shish. Pegouisse or
Be-gwa-is must have been a stoical as well as a genial philosopher ; for he
" never for a moment betrayed anything like anger or resentment.
'
. . I am
an old man,' said he, and ' it is but a short time that they will laugh at me for
the loss of my nose.' "