It must have been early in the spring when we arrived at Sau-ge-nong, for I can remember that at this time the leaves were small, and the Indians were about planting their corn. They managed to make me assist at their labours, partly by signs, and partly by the few words of English old Manito-o-geezhik could speak. After planting, they all left the village, and went out to hunt and dry meat. When they came to their hunting grounds, they chose a place where many deer resorted, and here they began to build a long screen like a fence; this they made of green boughs and small trees. When they had built a part of it, they showed me how to remove the leaves and dry brush from that side of it to which the Indians were to come to shoot the deer. In this labour I was sometimes assisted by the squaws and children, but at other times I was left alone. It now began to be warm weather, and it happened one day that having been left alone, as I was tired and thirsty, I fell asleep. I cannot tell how long I slept, but when I began to awake, I thought I heard some one crying a great way off. Then I tried to raise up my head, but could not. Being now more awake, I saw my Indian mother and sister standing by me, and perceived that my face and head were wet. The old woman and her daughter were crying bitterly, but it was some time before I perceived that my head was badly cut and bruised. It appears that after I had fallen asleep, Manito-o-geezhik, passing that way, had perceived me, had tomahawked me, and thrown me in the bushes; and that when he came to his camp he had said to his wife, “old woman, the boy I brought you is good for nothing; I have killed him, and you will find him in such a place.” The old woman and her daughter having found me, discovered still some signs of life, and had stood over me a long time, crying, and pouring cold water on my head, when I waked. In a few days I recovered in some measure from this hurt, and was again set to work at the screen, but I was more careful not to fall asleep; I endeavoured to assist them at their labours, and to comply in all instances with their directions, but I was notwithstanding treated with great harshness, particularly by the old man, and his two sons She-mung and Kwo-tash-e. While we remained at the hunting camp, one of them put a bridle in my hand, and pointing in a certain direction, motioned me to go. I went accordingly, supposing he wished me to bring a horse; I went and caught the first I could find, and in this way I learned to discharge such services as they required of me.
When we returned from hunting, I carried on my back a large pack of dried meat all the way to the village, but though I was almost starved, I dared not touch a morsel of it. My Indian mother, who seemed to have some compassion for me, would sometimes steal a little food, and hide it for me until the old man was gone away, and then give it to me. After we returned to the village the young men, whenever the weather was pleasant, were engaged in spearing fish, and they used to take me to steer the canoe. As I did not know how to do this very well, they commonly turned upon me, beat me, and often knocked me down with the pole of the spear. By one or the other of them I was beaten almost every day. Other Indians, not of our family, would sometimes seem to pity me, and when they could without being observed by the old man, they would sometimes give me food, and take notice of me.
After the corn was gathered in the fall, and disposed of in the Sun-je-gwun-nun, or Ca-ches, where they hide it for the winter, they went to hunt on the Sau-ge-nong River. I was here, as I had always been when among them, much distressed with hunger. As I was often with them in the woods, I saw them eating something, and I endeavoured to discover what it was, but they carefully concealed it from me. It was some time before I accidentally found some beach-nuts, and though I knew not what they were, I was tempted to taste them, and finding them very good, I showed them to the Indians, when they laughed, and let me know these were what they had all along been eating. After the snow had fallen, I was compelled to follow the hunters, and often-times to drag home to the lodge a whole deer, though it was with the greatest difficulty I could do so.
At night I had always to lie between the fire and the door of the lodge, and when any one passed out or came in, they commonly gave me a kick; and whenever they went to drink, they made a practice to throw some water on me. The old man constantly treated me with much cruelty, but his ill humor showed itself more on some occasions than others. One morning, he got up, put on his moccasins, and went out; but presently returning, he caught me by the hair of my head, dragged me out, rubbed my face for a long time in a mass of recent excrement, as one would do the nose of a cat, then tossed me by the hair into a snow bank. After this I was afraid to go into the lodge; but at length my mother came out and gave me some water to wash. We were now about to move our camp, and I was as usual made to carry a large pack; but as I had not been able to wash my face clean, when I came among other Indians they perceived the smell, and asked me the cause. By the aid of signs, and some few words I could now speak, I made them comprehend how I had been treated. Some of them appeared to pity me, assisted me to wash myself, and gave me something to eat[*].
Often when the old man would begin to beat me, my mother, who generally treated me with kindness, would throw her arms about me, and he would beat us both together. Towards the end of winter, we moved again to the sugar grounds. At this time, Kish-kau-ko, who was a young man of about twenty years of age, joined with him four other young men and went on a war-party. The old man also, as soon as the sugar was finished, returned to the village, collected a few men, and made his preparations to start. I had now been a year among them, and could understand a little of their language. The old man, when about to start, said to me, “now I am going to kill your father and your brother, and all your relations.” Kish-kau-ko returned first, but was badly wounded. He said he had been with his party to the Ohio River; that they had, after watching for some time, fired upon a small boat that was going down, and killed one man, the rest jumping into the water. He (Kish-kau-ko) had wounded himself in his thigh with his own spear, as he was pursuing them. They brought home the scalp of the man they had killed.
Old Manito-o-geezhik returned a few days afterwards, bringing an old white hat, which I knew, from a mark in the crown, to be that of my brother. He said he had killed all my father’s family, the negroes, and the horses, and had brought me my brother’s hat, that I might see he spoke the truth. I now believed that my friends had all been cut off, and was, on that account, the less anxious to return. This, it appears, had been precisely the object the old man wished to accomplish, by telling me the story of which but a small part was true. When I came to see Kish-kau-ko, after I returned from Red River, I asked him immediately, “Is it true, that your father has killed all my relations?” He told me it was not; that Manito-o-geezhik, the year after I was taken, at the same season of the year, returned to the same field where he had found me; that, as on the preceding year, he had watched my father and his people planting corn, from morning till noon; that then they all went into the house, except my brother, who was then nineteen years of age: he remained ploughing with a span of horses, having the lines about his neck, when the Indians rushed upon him; the horses started to run; my brother was entangled in the lines, and thrown down, when the Indians caught him. The horses they killed with their bows and arrows, and took my brother away into the woods. They crossed the Ohio before night, and had proceeded a good distance in their way up the Miami. At night they left my brother securely bound, as they thought, to a tree. His hands and arms were tied behind him, and there were cords around his breast and neck; but having bitten off some of the cords, he was able to get a pen-knife that was in his pocket, with which he cut himself loose, and immediately run towards the Ohio, at which he arrived, and which he crossed by swimming, and reached his father’s house about sunrise in the morning. The Indians were roused by the noise he made, and pursued him into the woods; but as the night was very dark, they were not able to overtake him. His hat had been left at the camp, and this they brought to make me believe they had killed him. Thus I remained for two years in this family, and gradually came to have less and less hope of escape, though I did not forget what the English traders on the Maumee had said, and I wished they might remember and come for me. The men were often drunk, and whenever they were so, they sought to kill me. In these cases, I learned to run and hide myself in the woods, and I dared not return before their drunken frolic was over. During the two years that I remained at Sau-ge-nong, I was constantly suffering from hunger; and though strangers, or those not belonging to the family, sometimes fed me, I had never enough to eat. The old woman they called Ne-keek-wos-ke-cheeme-kwa– “the Otter woman,” the otter being her totem – treated me with kindness, as did her daughters, as well as Kish-kau-ko and Be-nais-sa, the bird, the youngest son, of about my own age. Kish-kau-ko and his father, and the two brothers, Kwo-ta-she and She-mung, were blood-thirsty and cruel, and those who remain of this family, continue, to this time, troublesome to the whites. Be-nais-sa, who came to see me when I was at Detroit, and who always treated me kindly, was a better man, but he is since dead. While I remained with them at Sau-ge-nong, I saw white men but once. Then a small boat passed, and the Indians took me out to it in a canoe, rightly supposing that my wretched appearance would excite the compassion of the traders, or whatever white men they were. These gave me bread, apples, and other presents, all which, except one apple, the Indians took from me. By this family I was named Shaw-shaw-wa ne-ba-se, (the Falcon,) which name I retained while I remained among the Indians.
*
Tanner has much of the Indian habit of concealing emotion; but when he related the above to me, the glimmering of his eye, and a convulsive movement of his upper lip, betrayed sufficiently, that he is not without the enduring thirst for revenge which belongs to the people among whom he has spent his life. “As soon,” said he, in connection with this anecdote, “as I landed in Detroit on my return from Red River, and found a man who could speak with me, I said ’where is Kish-kau-ko?’ ’He is in prison.’ ’Where is Manito-o-geezhik, his father?’ ’Dead two months since.’ ’It is well he is dead.’” Intimating that though more than thirty years had elapsed, he intended now to have avenged himself for the injury done him when a boy not eleven years of age. –