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54
WASHINGTON'S ROAD

Sioux and Dacotahs to the "Back-bone of the World," as they called the Rocky Mountains. There, tradition states, they found wanderers like themselves, who spoke a familiar language—Wyandots who had come hither long before to escape the revengeful Senecas! But the majority of the nation built great rafts and set float on the Detroit river. This was a reckless alternative to choose, but it brought the persecuted nation to their long-sought place of refuge. As they passed the present site of Detroit they saw with amazement an array of white tents and soldiers dressed in white, keeping watch. The Wyandots had found the French building a fort, and fear of the Senecas vanished. On the shores of neighboring Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie the Wyandots built their fires, and the relations between them and the French were most cordial. The year of this memorable Wyandot hegira is given as 1701, which, fortunately, corresponds with the founding of Detroit.

When Mad Anthony Wayne was waging his last campaign against the western Indians in 1794, he once summoned to him