Kickapoo John

by Wayne Bethard

A lot has happened in the hundred and eighty plus years since this remarkable story took place, a story handed down for ages, told and retold over campfires by the old ones and across fireplace hearths to the amazement of all who hear it. At a very young age little Johnny Johnson, so the story goes, had an accidental encounter with a pickaxe that left him scarred for life. He survives, but then gets captured by Indians. As the years pass he eventually becomes exposed to numerous Indian doctors and basket makers who teach him their trades. He learns their ways, but as destiny would have it, with the help of that scar on his face, he returns to his life before the kidnapping. Native American northern tribes embellish the story because little Johnny held no animosity toward his captors, and favored his association with the Indians over that of most white men. His expertise in shooting a bow and arrow learned while living with the Indians, his prowess with animals, and at the encouragement of friends, after becoming an adult he joins a traveling medicine show, then becomes a noted physician in the famed Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company that toured the country in the late eighteen hundreds.
Kickapoo John, by Wayne Bethard, is this author’s novelized version of the boy’s story.

175 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2016