Volume 1

henry's hennery—DURING THE BOISSON. 429
also employed making sugar here. 4.th. Wild fowl in
abundance, yth. Snow entirely gone. My blacksmith
made a plowshare weighing 30 pounds, gth. The river
broke up. nth. River clear of ice. I got a very large
wooden canoe made out of Hard. igth. My hen, having
laid 12 eggs, appeared inclined to hatch; so I put them
under her. We take sturgeon in abundance in our nets.
2'jth.
Boats and rafts arrived from Grandes Fourches.
May 8th. Out of 12 eggs my hen hatched 11 chickens.
loth. In the course of 24 hours we caught in one net 120
sturgeon, weighing 60 to 150 lbs. each. Made up pemmican.
The Assiniboines, Crees, Sonnants, and Saulteurs,
having camped at the fort for some time and emptied some
kegs of high wine, must have a parting drop, as they propose
to decamp soon. Wm. Henry gave out a lo-gallon
keg of high wine gratis. During the boisson Porcupine
Tail's son was murdered by a Courte Oreille, his beau-frere ;
he received 15 stabs in the belly and breast, and fell dead
on the spot. A few days before this affair the same Courte
Oreille had fired at him, but as the gun was only loaded
with powder, only a few grains entered the skin and did no
serious injury. About ten days ago another Saulteur was
murdered by his wife, who put the muzzle of his gun in his
mouth and blew the back part of his head away. They
were a young couple, with a boy about a year old ;
she had
the handsomest face of all the women on this river, and he
was a good, honest young fellow, called La Biche. Murders
among these people are so frequent that we pay little attem
tion to them. Tneir only excuse for such outrages is that
they are drunk.
May 12th. We began to build a large boat to carry pemmican
down to Bas de la Riviere. 14th. Jean Baptiste, my
had sent to Leech lake for sugar, arrived on
guide, whom I
foot with one Indian, having found the water so very low
that he was obliged to put his cargoes en cache above
Riviere a I'Eau Claire [Clear Water river, Minn.], and could
only send down two canoes with
a small part of their origi-