”Indian camp” is a short story by Ernest Hemingway written in 1921. It’s about the young boy Nick who accompanies his father, who is a doctor, to an Indian camp where an Indian woman has been in labour for a few days. His uncle George is also going with them to the camp but in another boat. They arrive at the camp where Nick’s father is going help the woman have her baby. The woman is lying on a bunk inside one of the shanties. Her husband, who has hurt his foot, is lying in the upper bunk. Nick’s father has to do a caesarean and Nick watches while his father is preforming the operation. When the baby is born Nick’s father turns to the Indian woman’s husband to see how he’s doing but it turns out that the husband has committed suicide by cutting his throat whit a razor. Then Nick and his father sails back, while Nick is asking a lot of questions.
Setting
The story takes place in an Indian camp - and on a lake, a meadow and in a wood on the way to and from the camp in northern Michigan (I assume it’s in Michigan, because a nurse will come from St. Ignace (page 15, line 17), witch is a city in northern Michigan). It probably takes place around 1910 based on the fact that Hemingway himself was a child at that time and his own father also was a doctor, who also paid doctor’s calls among Indians in Michigan. Also what is going on in the short story corresponds with the factual historical time, e.g. that a doctor goes to help out in an Indian camp on a primitive basis.
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