Note III-10 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: LEECH LAKE TO ST. LOUIS, FEBRUARY 1ST-APRIL 30TH, 1806.

This most celebrated chief of the Leech Lake Chippewas, or Pillagers, had three names, whose several variants number probably three dozen. One of them may be written Ask a Buggy Cuss—for if that is not right, it is as near right as some others, and easier to say than any of the rest. It is the rule that the name is different with everyone who uses it, and it often varies with the same author whose "takes" fall into the hands of different compositors. Some of the forms I have noted are: Aishkibugikozsh; Aishkabugakosh; Eshkibogikoj; Esquibusicoge; Aishkebugekoshe and Eschkebugecoshe (in Minn. Hist. Coll., V. passim); Eski Bugeckoge (in the French Pike, I. p. 220). The French form of the name was Gueule Platte; and the English of it was Flat Mouth. Pike spells the French in half a dozen different ways, the question of gender included in the variation; while Schoolcraft, who was something of a linguist, is equally vagarious in this case, giving us Geulle Platte, Gouelle Platte, Guelle Plat, Gueulle Plat, Guella Plat—anything you please, except Gruel Plate or Ghoul Plot! Our Gallic friends themselves tried a variety of combinations, as gole, goule, gule, before they suited themselves with gueule as a satisfactory substitute for the Latin gula—just as we did before we made gulley and gullet out of the same old Roman stock. On Pike's folding Abstract, the individual whose mouth, jaws, and throat are so much in literary doubt figures as "Eskibugeckoge, Geuelle Platte, Flat Mouth, first chief of his band." This was a large one, best known as the Pillagers, also as Muckundwas, who had long maintained a separate tribal organization. The medal which Flat Mouth had received from the British at Fort William on Lake Superior, and which Pike took from him to substitute an American one, was replaced by a large solid silver one given him by Schoolcraft July 19th, 1828. The latter author has a long and good account of this remarkably brave and sensible Indian, who in 1832 seemed to be turned of 60 years, about 5 feet 9 or 10 inches high, erect, but inclined to corpulency. He had been on the war-path 25 times, and had killed a good many Sioux without ever receiving a wound. He was a man of great discernment and sound judgment, extensively and accurately informed upon all affairs which concerned his people or himself. There is much said of him in the Minnesota Historical Collections from first to last, especially in the Hon. W. W. Warren's History of the Ojibwas, and Rev. E. D. Neill's continuation of the same subject: see for example pp. 17, 19, 45, 50, 138, 178, 223, 269, 275, 324, 342, 349, 352, 359, 360, 362, 369, and 459, 463, 465, 475, 478, in Vol. V. of those Collections. He figured prominently in Anglojibwa affairs for more than half a century, and was living in 1852, at a supposed age of about 78 years, having been born about 1774. The circumstances under which the Leech Lake Indians received the names of Makandwyinniniwag, Mukundwais, or Muckundwas, F. Pilleurs, E. Pillagers, Plunderers, and Robbers, are said in substance by Schoolcraft to be these: During the period of great irregularities in the fur-trade consequent upon the transfer of the balance of power from French to English hands, when the latter were still dependent in part or entirely upon the former for their clerks and boatmen, and these were in great favor with the Indians, one Berti came on with goods and took his station at the mouth of Crow-wing r. to trade with the Chips. But he had more to sell than they could buy, including guns and ammunition which he knew the Sioux would be glad to get. The Chips., however, forbade his thus arming their foes; and when he started for the Sioux country, in spite of their warnings and threats, they arrested him by force of arms, and robbed him of all he possessed, though they spared his life. Berti returned to Sandy l., soon died of a broken heart, or of the exertions he had made to defend his property, and was buried thereabouts. Dr. Douglass Houghton relates a curious story of this trader's indirect causation of a terrible smallpox epidemic that ravaged the Chips. The above occurrences were in 1767-68. When the facts became known to the company at Mackinac, the Indians were directed to make requital, with threats of punishment for non-compliance. A deputation went to Mackinac in the spring of 1770, with furs which were taken as an equivalent for those which had been stolen, and the Indians were dismissed with a cask of liquor and a closely rolled flag as a token of friendship. They were enjoined not to broach the one or unroll the other till they got home. But on the way they did both, and had a drunken spree with some of their friends at Fond du Lac. Several were taken sick, some died, and it was soon discovered that the disease had broken out among them. It was spread broadcast, and is said to have cost many hundred Chippewa lives before its ravages ceased. Whether rightly or wrongly, the Indians were always firmly persuaded that a dastardly outrage had been perpetrated upon them by the intentional communication to them of the disease through the medium of the presents they had received from officers of the fur company. I have thus cited Schoolcraft for the popular or traditional as distinguished from the proper or historical presentation of this case. The facts are set forth at length in Warren's History of the Ojibways, chap. xxi., forming pp. 256-262 of Minn. Hist. Coll., V. 1885. The nom de guerre which the Pillagers accepted for themselves is there rendered Mukimduawininewug (men who take by force). There appears to be no truth whatever in laying upon the British the infamous charge of intentional introduction of smallpox. Warren had the facts direct from an intelligent old chief of the Pillagers, from which it appears that the terrible epidemic, costing several thousand lives, was introduced on the return of a war-party of Kenistenos, Assineboines, and Ojibways, who had gone for scalps to the Kechepegano (Missouri) r., and caught the infection from a village of Giaucthinnewug (Grosventres).