was not more than an inch long; and when they opened the last one they
found nothing but mouldy particles in this last little box! They
wondered very much what it was, and a great many closely inspected to
try to find out what it meant. But alas, alas! pretty soon burst out a
terrible sickness among them. The great Indian doctors themselves were
taken sick and died. The tradition says it was indeed awful and
terrible. Every one taken with it was sure to die. Lodge after lodge
was totally vacated--nothing but the dead bodies lying here and there
in their lodges--entire families being swept off with the ravages of
this terrible disease. The whole coast of Arbor Croche, or Waw-gaw-naw-
ke-zee, where their principal village was situated, on the west shore
of the peninsula near the Straits, which is said to have been a
continuous village some fifteen or sixteen miles long and extending
from what is now called Cross Village to Seven-Mile Point (that is,
seven miles from Little Traverse, now Harbor Springs), was entirely
depopulated and laid waste. It is generally believed among the Indians
of Arbor Croche that this wholesale murder of the Ottawas by this
terrible disease sent by the British people, was actuated through
hatred, and expressly to kill off the Ottawas and Chippewas because
they were friends of the French Government or French King, whom they
called "Their Great Father." The reason that to-day we see no full-
grown trees standing along the coast of Arbor Croche, a mile or more in
width along the shore, is because the trees were entirely cleared away
for this famous long village, which existed before the small-pox raged
among the Ottawas.

In my first recollection of the country of Arbor Croche, which is sixty
years ago, there was nothing but small shrubbery here and there in
small patches, such as wild cherry trees, but the most of it was grassy
plain; and such an abundance of wild strawberries, raspberries and