ry. He was one of the leading chiefs of the
Santee band of Sioux Indians. He was born about 1780. He was brave in
battle, wise in council, and possessed many other noble qualities,
which caused him to rise far above his fellow chieftains. He possessed
a large fund of common sense. Years prior to the advent of the white
man in this region, he regarded hunting and fishing as a too precarious
means to a livelihood, and attempted to teach his people agriculture
and succeeded to a limited extent.

It was a strange circumstance that prompted the chief to this wise
action. On a hunting tour in the Red River country, with a part of his
band, they were overtaken by a drifting storm and remained, for several
days, under the snow, without any food whatsoever. While buried in
those drifts, he resolved to rely, in part, upon agriculture, for
subsistence, if he escaped alive, and he carried out his resolution,
after the immediate peril was passed. His band cultivated small fields
of quickly maturing corn, which had been introduced by their chief in
the early 30's. He was respected and loved by his people and quite well
obeyed.

[Illustration: REV. JOHN EASTMAN.]

Before the coming of the missionaries he taught and enforced, by his
example, this principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill
non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He
favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had
six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain
half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted this human policy.

His own band lived on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, within
the present limits of Minneapolis. On the present site of lovely
Lakewood--Minneapolis' most fashionable cemetery--was his village of
several hundred savages, and also an Indian burial place. This village
was the front guard against the war parties of the Ojibways--feudal
enemies of the Sioux--but finally as their young men were killed off in
battle, they were compelled to remove and join their people on the
banks of the Minnesota and farther West. He located his greatly reduced
band at Bloomington, directly west of his original village. This
removal occurred prior to 1838.

He was never hostile to the approach of civilization, or blind to the
blessings it might confer on his people.

He was one of the first of his tribe to accept the white man's ways and
to urge his band to follow his example