Capt. Ebstein ran up his flag on a telegraph pole, and the few Americans present greeted it with hearty cheers as the English soldiers sailed away to Victoria.

In the meanwhile the information had been received by our government and communicated to Gen. E. S. Canby, commanding the Department of the Columbia, with headquarters in Portland, Oregon, who immediately took steps to send a detachment of troops to San Juan to salute the British flag, and pay the other usual honors on the occasion of an evacuation; but the hasty departure of the English garrison had prevented this act of courtesy on our part. Circumstances indicated that this pleasant duty would have devolved upon me. I have always regretted that I could not have been personally associated with the final act in a series of events which had commenced with the first boundary treaty ninety years before.

Many anxious hours had been spent by statesmen, English and American, over the questions raised by national and local jealousies and rivalries, and the conflicting claims of colonies, companies of traders, states and provinces, combined with an uncertain geographical knowledge of the country, and an ignorance of its commercial, agricultural and political value, as the boundary line slowly marched from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, through almost a century of time. The disputes had more than once threatened to end in war. It was the good sense of military commanders that opened the way for a peaceful settlement. It was the word of a soldier king that put the vexed question forever at rest.

More and more, thoughtful men expect that, in the settlement of international difficulties, nations should arbitrate whenever possible, fight only when they must.

But I would have my friends understand that war is not an unmixed evil. Indeed it has more than once proved a blessing to a people.

"War is honorable in those

Who do their native right maintain,
Whose swords an iron barrier rear

Between the lawless spoiler and the weak."

In our own country we are a better, a stronger people from the necessity laid upon us to open the continent, step by step,

to the progress of civilization, from New England to the Golden Gate, by the strong hand of the military power. Much of cruelty, much of injustice, has marked our dealings with the native race, the Indian tribes whom we found in possession of the land; and for these acts I have no word of excuse, for, next to slavery, the treatment in many cases of the native race is the darkest page in American history. But blessings have followed in the train of war. The War of the Revolution made us a nation of freemen. The War of 1812 gave us confidence in ourselves and gained us the respect of England and of Europe. The war with Mexico, although in my judgment not justifiable, opened new fields to American enterprise. The War of the Rebellion made us what we were not before, one people from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

I would not fire the hearts of the young with military ardor for the lust of glory. I would not have them forget the dark side of war. But I would have them so filled with love of country that they would willingly follow in the footsteps of their fathers, and if the emergency shall demand the sacrifice of life, freely give it, that the blessings which follow in the train of a righteous war, freedom for persons, property, and conscience, and the reign of law, may be the heritage of those who follow them.

THE OJIBWAYS IN MINNESOTA.*

BY REV. JOSEPH A. GILFILLAN.

In describing the Ojibway people as seen during more than twenty years of missionary work among them, I cannot claim infallibility for the impressions I am about to record, but only that they appeared so to me. It should be stated also that the names Ojibway and Chippewa are exactly synonymous, the latter being a more anglicized form of the same word.

THEIR GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

In 1873 the local distribution of the Ojibways in Minnesota was not much different from what it is now. There were 800 or 900 about Mille Lacs; about 1,200 at Red lake; about 1,000 around Leech lake; and about 600 around Cass lake and lake. Winnibigoshish. At Gull lake about 200 lingered who had not been removed to the White Earth reservation, and there were 600 or 800 scattered through the immense pine forests stretching from Winnibigoshish, by Sandy lake, to the Northern Pacific railroad; while at White Earth about 1,700 were located, very largely French mixed-bloods. Those who lived at White Earth had been removed there within five years, mostly from Gull lake and Crow Wing; but the mixed bloods had come from many different parts of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Pembina band were then living at Pembina river, and the Bois Forts or Lake Vermilion Indians where they still live.

The principal changes since that time have been that perhaps 300 of the Mille Lacs band and the remaining 200 Gull

*Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, November 8,

Lake Indians have removed to White Earth; and about 300 Leech Lake Indians and 100 Cass Lakers, and perhaps 1,000 more French Canadian mixed-bloods, who had been living scattered among the whites in Minnesota and Wisconsin, have come to the same place. Also a band of Pembinas, largely mixed-bloods, removed to the White Earth reservation about twenty-four years ago.

On the White Earth reservation more than three-fourths of the present 3,000 population are mixed-bloods, mostly French. At Red Lake Agency and at Leech lake there are also many. About Leech lake there are perhaps a hundred descendants of the negro Bungo; nearly all these are very muscular, and some have been of unusually fine physique. The mixed-bloods generally are inferior to the full-bloods morally, and I think also mentally and physically. However, as they speak French and generally English also, they have advantage over the full-blood Ojibways. It should be said, moreover, that there are some mixed-bloods who are as good and as nice in every way as any white people.

The beautiful and fertile land of the White Earth reservation, and the rations given by the United States government for from one to five years to each member of the families who would remove there, since the treaty of 1889, have been the inducements which have influenced those who came, both mixed-bloods and Indians. In addition, they had houses built for them, land broken, stoves, wagons, sleighs, cows and oxen given them, and many other inducements, enabling them to make a good start in life.

THE OJIBWAY'S LOVE OF HIS NATIVE PLACE.

But the Indian is very strongly attached to his old home, where he was born; and, unlike the white man, he generally lives and dies in his native village. He knows every tree and pond for miles around, and he knows he can make a living there for he has always done so; but he has a dread of going elsewhere, even to far more fertile land, to try to make his living, for that is launching out on, to him, an unknown sea. Hence the offer of four or five years' rations of, to him, most luxurious food, and of oxen, plows, wagons, and everything

to begin farming with, has not tempted the Ojibways in large numbers from their native lakes, as Mille Lacs, Leech lake, Cass lake, and others. The Ojibway reasons to himself: “I have here an inexhaustible supply of fish; I have venison, wild rice, and other things; but if I go on the prairie, where there are none of these things, and where I must plow and work for a living, perhaps I shall have a hard time. So perhaps I had better not leave the fish, nor let these offers tempt me."

The Ojibway always, in his natural state, lives on lakes or rivers. He is a fish Indian, and draws his subsistence largely from the water. Formerly he lived on other flesh. Old Indians still living tell of the countless herds of buffalo, moose, elk, reindeer, and other animals, which filled the country in their young days, and which they say were in such vast numbers that they did not think then it would ever be possible by any effort of man to diminish them. They tell of the moose yarding together in those days, in winters when the snow was very deep, in droves of hundreds, and of their going and killing them all with their axes. But with the nearer approach of the white man the game was driven off, and the Ojibway became of necessity a fish Indian. The fish could not be driven off like the buffalo. In their natural state, fish is about threefourths of their living. It may be proper here to say that when the earliest Indians were removed to White Earth, in 1868, there were still a few buffalo to be seen on the prairies there, and for some years afterward.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE.

In appearance the Ojibway is a fine looking man, especially when living in the freedom of his native forests, and before he has been enfeebled by the vices he has learned from white men. Many are quite tall, the tallest I have seen being from 6 feet and 4 inches to 6 feet 8 inches. They have well developed chests and sinewy frames. Their limbs are not nearly so heavy as those of many white men. They very generally have small and beautifully shaped hands; indeed, from their hands one would take them to be of nature's aristocracy. The men have an erect, graceful, and easy carriage, and a beautiful springy step and motion in their native wilds, where they walk and look like the lords of creation. In their beauty of