But when an old man discovered the new-born child, he commanded the
women to take care of him, "for," said he, "we know not how
precious the strength of even one warrior may some day become to
his nation!"

This child lived to become great among us, as was intimated to
the superstitious by the circumstances of his birth. At
the age of about seventy-five years, he saved his band from utter
destruction at the hands of their ancestral enemies, by suddenly
giving warning received in a dream of the approach of a large
war-party. The men immediately sent out scouts, and felled trees
for a stockade, barely in time to meet and repel the predicted
attack. Five years later, he repeated the service, and again saved
his people from awful slaughter. There was no confusion of figures
or omens, as with lesser medicine-men, but in every incident that
is told of him his interpretation of the sign, whatever it
was, proved singularly correct.

The father of Little Crow, the chief who led the "Minnesota
massacre" of 1862, was another prophet of some note. One of his
characteristic prophecies was made only a few years before he died,
when he had declared that, although already an old man, he would go
once more upon the war-path. At the final war-feast, he declared
that three of the enemy would be slain, but he showed great
distress and reluctance in foretelling that he would lose two of
his own men. Three of the Ojibways were indeed slain as he had
said, but in the battle the old war prophet lost both of
his two sons.

There are many trustworthy men, and men of Christian faith, to