The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
My reputation was established by this success, and I was afterwards
noted in the tribe, in the art of a medicine woman, and sung the songs
which I have given to you. About four years after, I was married to O
Mush Kow Egeezhick, or the Strong Sky, who was a very active and
successful hunter, and kept his lodge well supplied with food; and we
lived happy. After I had had two children, a girl and a boy, we went
out, as is the custom of the Indians in the spring, to visit the white
settlements. One night, while we were encamped at the head of the
portage at Pauwating (the Falls of St. Mary's), angry words passed
between my husband and a half Frenchman named Gaultier, who, with his
two cousins, in the course of the dispute, drew their knives and a
tomahawk, and stabbed and cut him in four or five places, in his body,
head and thighs. This happened the first year that the Americans came to
that place (1822). He had gone out at a late hour in the evening, to
visit the tent of Gaultier. Having been urged by one of the trader's men
to take liquor that evening, and it being already late, I desired him
not to go, but to defer his visit till next day; and after he had left
the lodge, I felt a sudden presentiment of evil, and I went after him,
and renewed my efforts in vain. He told me to return, and as I had two
children in the lodge, the youngest of whom, a boy, was still in his
cradle, and then ill, I sat up with him late, and waited and waited,
till a late hour, and then fell asleep from exhaustion. I slept very
sound. The first I knew, was a violent shaking from a girl, a niece of
Gaultier's, who told me my husband and Gaultier were all the time
quarrelling. I arose, and went up the stream to Gaultier's camp fire. It
was nearly out, and I tried in vain to make it blaze. I looked into his
tent, but all was dark and not a soul there. They had suddenly fled,
although I did not at the moment know the cause. I tried to make a light
to find my husband, but could find nothing dry, for it had rained very
hard the day before. After being out a while my vision became clearer,
and turning toward the river side, I saw a dark object lying near the
shore, on a grassy opening. I was attracted by something glistening,
which turned out to be his ear-rings. I thought he was asleep, and in
stooping to awake him, I slipped and fell on my knees. I had slipped in
his blood on the grass, and putting my hand on his face, found him dead.
In the morning the Indian agent came with soldiers from the fort, to see
what had happened, but the murderer and all his bloody gang of relatives
had fled. The agent gave orders to have the body buried in the old
Indian burial ground, below the Falls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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