Nine Years a Captive/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.

of further difficulties and deliverances.

One winter, as we were moving from place to place, our hunters killed some moose. One lying some miles from our wigwams, a young Indian and myself were ordered to fetch part of it. We set out in the morning, when the weather was promising, but it proved a very cold, cloudy day. It was late in the evening before we arrived at the place where the moose lay, so that we had no time to provide materials for a fire or shelter. At the same time came on a storm of snow, very thick, which continued until the next morning. We made a small fire with what little rubbish we could find around us. The fire, with the warmth of our bodies, melted the snow upon us as fast as it fell; and so our clothes were filled with water. However, early in the morning we took our loads of moose flesh, and set out to return to our wigwams. We had not travelled far before my moose-skin coat (which was the only garment I had on my back, and the hair chiefly worn off) was frozen stiff round my knees, like a hoop, as were my snow-shoes and shoe-clouts to my feet. Thus I marched the whole day without fire or food. At first I was in great pain, then my flesh became numb, and at times I felt extremely sick, and thought I could not travel one foot farther; but I wonderfully revived again.

After long travelling I felt very drowsy, and had thoughts of sitting down, which had I done, without doubt I had fallen on my final sleep, as my dear companion, Evans, had done before. My Indian companion, being better clothed, had left me long before. Again my spirits revived as much as if I had received the richest cordial. Some hours after sunset I reached the wigwam, and crawling in with my snow-shoes on, the Indians cried out, "The captive is frozen to death!" They took off my pack, and the place where that lay against my back was the only one that was not frozen. They cut off my shoes, and stripped off the clouts from my feet, which were as void of feeling as any frozen flesh could be. I had not sat long by the fire before the blood began to circulate, and my feet to my ankles turned black, and swelled with bloody blisters, and were inexpressibly painful. The Indians said one to another, "His feet will rot, and he will die." Yet I slept well at night. Soon after, the skin came off my feet from my ankles, whole, like a shoe, leaving my toes naked, without a nail, and the ends of my great toe bones bare, which, in a little time, turned black, so that I was obliged to cut the first joint off with my knife. The Indians gave me rags to bind up my feet, and advised me to apply fir-balsam, but withal added that they believed it was not worth while to use means, for I should certainly die. But, by the use of my elbows, and a stick in each hand. I shoved myself along as I sat upon the ground over the snow from one tree to another, till I got some balsam. This I burned in a clam-shell till it was of a consistence like salve, which I applied to my feet and ankles, and, by the divine blessing, within a week I could go about upon my heels with my staff. And through God's goodness, we had provisions enough, so that we did not remove under ten or fifteen days. Then the Indians made two little hoops, something in the form of a snow-shoe, and sewing them to my feet, I was able to follow them in their tracks, on my heels, from place to place, though sometimes half leg deep in snow and water, which gave me the most acute pain imaginable; but I must walk or die. Yet within a year my feet were entirely well; and the nails came on my great toes, so that a very critical eye could scarcely perceive any part missing, or that they had been frozen at all.^[1]

In a time of great scarcity of provisions, the Indians chased a large moose into the river, and killed him. They brought the flesh to the village, and raised it on a scaffold, in a large wigwam, in order to make a feast. I was very officious in supplying them with wood and water, which pleased them so well that they now and then gave me a piece of flesh half boiled or roasted, which I ate with eagerness, and I doubt not with due thankfulness to the divine Being who so extraordinarily fed me. At length the scaffold bearing the moose meat broke, and I being under it, a large piece fell, and knocked me on the head. The Indians said I lay stunned a considerable time. The first I was sensible of was a murmuring noise in my ears, then my sight gradually returned, with an extreme pain in my hand, which was very much bruised; and it was long before I recovered, the weather being very hot.

I was once fishing with an Indian for sturgeon, and the Indian darting one, his feet slipped, and he turned the canoe bottom upward, with me under it. I held fast to the cross-bar, as I could not swim, with my face to the bottom of the canoe; but turning myself, I brought my breast to bear on the cross-bar, expecting every minute the Indian to tow me to the bank. But "he had other fish to fry." Thus I continued a quarter of an hour, [though] without want of breath, till the current drove me on a rocky point where I could reach bottom. There I stopped, and turned up my canoe. On looking about for the Indian, I saw him half a mile off up the river. On going to him, I asked him why he had not towed me to the bank, seeing he knew I could not swim. He said he knew I was under the canoe, for there were no bubbles any where to be seen, and that I should drive on the point. So while he was taking care of his fine sturgeon, which was eight or ten feet in length, I was left to sink or swim.

Once, as we were fishing for salmon at a fall of about fifteen feet of water, I came near being drowned in a deep hole at the foot of the fall. The Indians went into the water to wash themselves, and asked me to go with them. I told them I could not swim, but they insisted, and so I went in. They ordered me to dive across the deepest place, and if I fell short of the other side they said they would help me. But, instead of diving across the narrowest part, I was crawling on the bottom into the deepest place. They not seeing me rise, and knowing whereabouts I was by the bubbling of the water, a young girl dived down, and brought me up by the hair, otherwise I had perished in the water. Though the Indians, both male and female, go into the water together, they have each of them such a covering on that not the least indecency can be observed, and neither chastity nor modesty is violated.^[2]

While at the Indian village, I had been cutting wood and binding it up with an Indian rope, in order to carry it to the wigwam, a stout, ill-natured young fellow, about twenty years of age, threw me backward, sat on my breast, pulled out his knife, and said he would kill me, for he had never yet killed one of the English. I told him he might go to war, and that would be more manly than to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery for them. Notwithstanding all I could say, he began to cut and stab me on my breast. I seized him by the hair, and tumbling him off of me, followed him with my fists and knee with such application that he soon cried "Enough." But when I saw the blood run from my bosom, and felt the smart of the wounds he had given me. I at him again, and bid him, get up, and not lie there like a dog; told him of his former abuses offered to me, and other poor captives, and that if ever he offered the like to me again, I would pay him double. I sent him before me, and taking up my burden of wood, came to the Indians, and told them the whole truth, and they commended me. And I do not remember that ever he offered me the least abuse afterwards, though he was big enough to have despatched two of me.

↑ Surgeons differ as to whether human flesh which is frozen can be restored. This was illustrated in the celebrated case of Key vs. Thomson, recently before our Courts, where one set of doctors maintained that portions of the human body which had been frozen could be restored, while another set maintained that they could not. Gyles' experience would at first sight appear to favor the former view, but the freezing in his case might after all have been superficial. The restoration of the nails certainly was a curious circumstance. But his recovery seems to have been directly contrary to the opinion of the Indians whose experience in such matters must have been wide, and therefore the case of Gyles must be regarded as a remarkable and exceptional one.
↑ The modesty of all the Algonquin tribes of Indians was proverbial, and it is a remarkable circumstance that there is no instance on record of the slightest rudeness ever having been shewn to the person of a female captive by any tribe of the Algonquin nation. It is a fact that should be remembered to their credit,. even by those who most abhor their bloodthirstiness and cruelty. The Prairie Indians of the United States have no such honorable reputation, and those who read of the storming and sack of cities by modern armies may pause to ask "which of the civilized peoples have proved themselves equal to the poor Algonquins in virtue?" Not the Anglo-Saxon race certainly, which has been so eager to drive the Algonquins from the face of the earth. Read what the greatest of all Military Historians, Napier, says in his history of the Peninsular War of the conduct of the British Army after the storming of San Sebastian. "This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object: at Badajoz lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkeness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the must revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw of discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms; and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese, adjutant, who endeavored to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not from sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town."

[1] Surgeons differ as to whether human flesh which is frozen can be restored. This was illustrated in the celebrated case of Key vs. Thomson, recently before our Courts, where one set of doctors maintained that portions of the human body which had been frozen could be restored, while another set maintained that they could not. Gyles' experience would at first sight appear to favor the former view, but the freezing in his case might after all have been superficial. The restoration of the nails certainly was a curious circumstance. But his recovery seems to have been directly contrary to the opinion of the Indians whose experience in such matters must have been wide, and therefore the case of Gyles must be regarded as a remarkable and exceptional one.

[2] The modesty of all the Algonquin tribes of Indians was proverbial, and it is a remarkable circumstance that there is no instance on record of the slightest rudeness ever having been shewn to the person of a female captive by any tribe of the Algonquin nation. It is a fact that should be remembered to their credit,. even by those who most abhor their bloodthirstiness and cruelty. The Prairie Indians of the United States have no such honorable reputation, and those who read of the storming and sack of cities by modern armies may pause to ask "which of the civilized peoples have proved themselves equal to the poor Algonquins in virtue?" Not the Anglo-Saxon race certainly, which has been so eager to drive the Algonquins from the face of the earth. Read what the greatest of all Military Historians, Napier, says in his history of the Peninsular War of the conduct of the British Army after the storming of San Sebastian. "This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object: at Badajoz lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkeness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the must revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw of discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms; and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese, adjutant, who endeavored to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not from sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town."

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