With him our sunshine seemed to have departed. The skies, hitherto so bright and serene, became overcast, and instead of the charming voyage we had anticipated over the silver waters of the lake, we were obliged to keep ourselves housed under our canvas shelter, only peeping out now and then, to catch a glimpse of the surrounding prospect through the pouring rain.
It was what might have been expected on an autumnal day, but we were unreasonable enough to find it tedious; so, to beguile the time and lessen my disappointment, my husband related to me some incidents of his early history, apropos to the subject of “Four-Legs.”
While he was living at Prairie du Chien, in the employ of the American Fur Company, the chiefs and other Indians, from the Upper Mississippi, used frequently to come to the place to sell their furs and peltries, and to purchase merchandise, ammunition, trinkets, &c.
FOUR-LEG’S VILLAGE
Entrance to Winnebago Lake (the present town of Neenah). From a sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original Edition.
As is usual with all who are not yet acclimated, he was seized with chills and fever. One day, while suffering with an unusually severe access of the latter, a chief of the Four-Legs family, a brother to the one before-mentioned, came in to the Company’s warehouse to trade. There is no ceremony or restraint among the Indians, so hearing that Shaw-nee-aw-kee was sick, Four-Legs instantly made his way to him, to offer his sympathy and prescribe the proper remedies.
Every one who has suffered from ague and the intense fever that succeeds it, knows how insupportable is the protracted conversation of an inconsiderate person, and will readily believe that the longer Four-Legs continued his pratings the higher mounted the fever of the patient, and the more intolerable became the pain of head, back, and limbs.
At length the old man arrived at the climax of what he had to say. “It was not good for a young man, suffering with sickness, and away from his family, to be without a home and a wife. He had a nice daughter at home, handsome and healthy, a capital nurse, the best hand in all the tribe at trapping beaver and musk-rats. He was coming down again in the spring, and he would bring her with him, and Shaw-nee-aw-kee should see that he had told no falsehood about her. Should he go now, and bring his daughter the next time he came?”