In their dreams, Stone and Couture saw a train derail while crossing the Bad River Reservation, spilling a white powder into the river. The white powder caused disease and death of animals, plants and people, including the destruction of the sacred wild rice sloughs on the reservation at the delta where the Bad River meets Lake Superior. These sloughs had been the reason the Ojibwe settled in northern Wisconsin during their migration from the east coast four hundred years earlier. In that migration, the Ojibwe had, following a prophecy, followed a "miigis" (cowry) shell to a place where "food grows on water," a prophecy held to be fulfilled when they reached the wild rice waters of Wisconsin.