Land on Goose Island
About seven o’clock we landed to cook our supper on an island which is commemorated by Henry as the Isle des Outardes, and is now Goose Island. Mrs. Schoolcraft undertook the general management with all the alertness of one accustomed to these impromptu arrangements, and I did my best in my new vocation—dragged one or two blasted boughs to the fire, the least of them twice as big as myself, and laid the cloth upon the pebbly beach. The enormous fire was to keep off the mosquitoes, in which we succeeded pretty well, swallowing, however, as much smoke as would have dried us externally into hams or red herrings. We then returned to the boat, spread a bed for the children (who were my delight) in the bottom of it with mats and blankets, and disposed our own, on the lockers on each side, with buffalo skins, blankets, shawls, cloaks, and whatever was available, with my writing-case for a pillow.
After sunset, the breeze fell: the men were urged to row, but pleaded fatigue, and that they were hired for the day, and not for the night (which is the custom). One by one they sulkily abandoned their oars, and sunk to sleep under their blankets, all but our young captain: like Ulysses when steering away from Calypso—
“Placed at the helm he sat, and watched the skies,
Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes.”
He kept himself awake by singing hymns, in which Mrs. Schoolcraft joined him. I lay still, looking up at the stars and listening: when there was a pause in the singing, we kept up the conversation, fearing lest sleep should overcome our only pilot and guardian. Thus we floated on beneath that divine canopy—“which love had spread to curtain the sleeping world:” it was a most lovely and blessed night, bright and calm and warm, and we made some little way, for both wind and current were in our favour.
As we were coasting a little shadowy island, our captain mentioned a strange circumstance, very illustrative of Indian life and character. A short time ago a young Chippewa hunter, whom he knew, was shooting squirrels on this spot, when by some chance a large blighted pine fell upon him, knocking him down and crushing his leg, which was fractured in two places. He could not rise, he could not remove the tree which was lying across his broken leg. He was in a little uninhabited island, without the slightest probability of passing aid; and to lie there and starve to death in agonies, seemed all that was left to him. In this dilemma, with all the fortitude and promptitude of resource of a thorough-bred Indian, he took out his knife, cut off his own leg, bound it up, dragged himself along the ground to his hunting canoe, and paddled himself home to his wigwam on a distant island, where the cure of his wound was completed. The man is still alive.
Perhaps this story appears incredible. I believe it firmly. At the time, and since then, I heard other instances of Indian fortitude, and of their courage and skill in performing some of the boldest and most critical operations in surgery, which I really cannot venture to set down. But I will mention one or two of the least marvellous. There was a young chief, and famous hunter, whose arm was shattered by the bursting of his rifle. No one would venture the amputation, and it was bound up with certain herbs and dressings, accompanied with many magical ceremonies. The young man, who seemed aware of the inefficacy of such expedients, waited till the moment when he should be left alone. He had meantime, with pain and difficulty, hatched one of his knives into a saw; with this he completed the amputation of his own arm; and when his relations appeared they found the arm lying at one end of the wigwam, and the patient sitting at the other, with his wound bound up, and smoking with great tranquillity.