A French Fur Trader at Work
Courtesy of the Oneida Nation
My
friend McCauslin took me to a Frenchman's house--he was a baker by
trade,
the only baker in town--to board with him until I got an opportunity
to go home. Two days after I went to stay at the baker's, the
Indian that claimed me, his squaw and the young squaw that followed us to
the new town, came to see me and stayed three or four hours with me. He
asked me to give him some tobacco. I told him I had no money. He thought
I could get anything I wanted. I bought him a carrot of tobacco; it
weighed about three pounds; he seemed very well pleased. He and his wife
wanted me very much to go back home with them again. I told them I could
not, that I was very anxious to go home to my wife and family.
Three
or four days after that they revisited me, and still insisted on me to
go home with them. I told them that I expected every day to get an opportunity
to go home. I had some doubts about going back with them; I thought
perhaps they might play some trick on me, and take me to some other
town; and their water was so bad I could not drink it--nothing but a small
pond to make use of for their drinking and cooking, about forty
or
fifty yards long and about thirty yards wide. Their horses would not only
drink from, but wallow in it; the little Indian boys every day would
swim in it, and the Indians soak their deerskins in it. I could not
bear to drink it. When they would bring in a kettle of water to drink,
they would set it down on the floor. The dogs would generally took
the first drink out of the kettle. I have often seen when the dogs would
be drinking out of a kettle, an Indian would go up and kick him off,
and take up the kettle and drink after the dog. They had nothing to eat the
last week I was with them but Indian potatoes--some people call them
hoppines--that grew in the woods, and they were very scarce.
Sometimes
the Indian boys would catch land terrapins. They would draw their
heads out and tie a string around their neck and hang them up a few
minutes, and then put them in a kettle of water with some corn--when they
had it--without taking the entrails out or shell off the terrapin, and eat
the soup as well as the meat. We had all liked to have starved that
week; we had no meat; I was glad to get away.
I staid
three weeks with the French baker before I got an opportunity to start
home. I had a plenty to eat while I remained with the baker--good light
bread, bacon and sandy hill cranes, boiled in leyed corn, which made a
very good soup. I paid him three dollars per week for my board.
There
was a Mr. Pyatt a Frenchman, and his wife, whose residence was at St.
Vincennes, with whom I had some acquaintance. They had moved up to that
Kickapoo town in the fall of the year in order to trade with the Indians
that winter. They were then ready to return home to Vincennes. Mr.
Pyatt had purchased a drove of horses from the Indians. He had to go by land
with his horses. Mrs. Pyatt hired a large perogue and four
Frenchmen
to take her property home to Vincennes. I got a passage in her perogue.
She was very friendly to me; she did not charge me anything for my
passage.
We
arrived in Vincennes in forty-eight hours after we left the Kickapoo trading
town, which is said to be two hundred and ten miles. The river was
very high, and the four hands rowed day and night. We never put to land
but twice to get a little wood to cook something to eat.
I staid
five days at Vincennes before I got an opportunity of company to go on
my way home. It was too dangerous for one man to travel alone by land
without a gun. There was a Mr. Duff, who lived in the Illinois country,
came to Vincennes to move a Mrs. Moredock and family to the Illinois.
I got a passage with him by water. The morning I started from Vincennes
he was just ready to start before I knew I could get a passage
with
him, and I had not time to write. I got a Mr. John Rice Jones, a friend
of mine, to write to Col. Edgar, living in Kaskaskia, in the Illinois,
who was a particular friend of mine, and sent it by the express,
a Frenchman, that was going to start that day from Vincennes to Kaskaskia,
which he could ride in four days, and request Col. Edgar to
write
to my wife, who lived at Bellfontain, about forty miles from Kaskaskia,
and inform her that I was at Post Vincennes, on my return home
with a Mr. Duff by water, and inform her that I would be at Kaskaskia
on a certain day; I think it was two weeks from the time I left
Vincennes, and for her to send me a horse on that day to Kaskaskia.
Col.
Edgar wrote to her immediately, as soon as he received Mr. Jones' letter.
That was the first time she heard from me after I was taken prisoner.
I had written to her while I was at the Kickapoo town. That letter
never reached her. I had two brothers living at the Bellfontain; they
met me on the day I proposed being at Kaskaskia and brought me a
horse.
The next day I got home to the Bellfontain.
End of
the Project Gutenberg EBook of Narrative of the Captivity of William
Biggs
among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788, by William Biggs
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