Chapter 3

Injury was not uncommon. Cuts and scratches were common enough even in our own world, here they were a way of life. When the forest teems with wolves and bears, it was to be expected that injuries would occur. The first I was able to help with was on a hunt for piglets.

This was actually a dangerous venture. A male wild pig can do a lot of damage to a man with sharp tusks, strong jaw and hooves that will rend flesh. They will defend their herd for they are family. The female will fight like any mother for her young.

Unca was unlucky. We had captured some piglets, killing the mother and all the hunters (even myself – brought as a beast of burden) were happy and not alert enough. The boar charged in and we all leapt for trees to climb. Unca’s branch gave way and he fell to the boar’s charge. Naturally the others went to his aid. The usual approach with a boar was to climb out of his reach and then pelt him with stones and spears until he died or ran off. But with a man on the ground, the group dropped and surrounded the angry beast. When they had finished, Unca was too far gone to save, but his brother had a foot facing sideways. His lower bone was fractured. In the camp, the medicine man would fix it, but out here he would have to hobble for twenty miles at least. It was clear that was his intention. They are intensely tough.

I did not think, I took the dying Unca’s axe and cut two branches, binding them to either side of the broken leg. Then I bound a bark underneath to cushion the step and finally I made a walking stick for him, a crutch really. The braves looked on bemused, they knew about splints, but had never seen a third leg – the crutch. When we reached the village, the medicine man was called and much discussion was had and pointing at me and nods and laughter. Umacanta – which means ‘he runs swiftly’ was renamed Umabatanta ‘he does not run’. But he was grateful that he had two legs. A one legged Indian is a dead Indian in the unforgiving wilderness. I was still just a slave though.

But I was able to start helping the medicine man. I travelled with him to glades and pastures, to high mountain tops and even captured the rattlesnake of the area to milk its poison. He taught me many things. He slowly introduced me to the snake poison; at first a tiny amount made me ill but my body learned to cope and the amount was increased. By the end of the year I was able to accept a bite from the snake – it was more a trick than a way of treating something, the tribe respected me as a shaman now since I was unharmed by the bite. He showed me the Mangol; a cabbage like vegetable that tasted well enough but would slowly emasculate a man. The leaf, boiled in stew, removed the desire of a man to have his woman, and, if continued, it removed his ability to produce seed for a woman either. He alluded to the root as ‘too strong’ for safety. It would remove all manhood in one handful of dried root powder.

He taught me of power wampum which could be smoked to see your own body from on high. He taught me of fungus that removed fear, fungus that removed pain, and fungus that simply killed with no cure. He had other stories too, like the Elk liver was good for getting a woman pregnant from a distance. Some I felt were less likely to be true.

When the chief’s son fell, he fell badly. He had been climbing to get at the beehive, carrying a smoking grass bundle to put the bees to sleep. He was too young to be climbing so high, I thought; but these people seemed not to know fear from an early age. He fell and his foot jammed between two rocks and he then fell back. The result was that his foot was badly crushed. Again, he was stoical as a brave and I lifted him to vertical to pull his foot out. He never complained though he was in agony. We brought him back and I told the medicine man that the leg was not broken but very badly sprained.