Their daughter Jane Johnston Schoolcraft has become recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States.
She was born as Ozhaguscodaywayquay (Green Prairie Woman) into an Ojibwe family in Chequameqon, near present-day La Pointe, Wisconsin and Chequamegon Bay.
Ozhaguscodaywayquay later related to Anna Brownell Jameson in 1836 the story of her vision quest that she had when she was a teenager, in which she fasted in order to find a guardian spirit.
[3] According to Jameson's 1838 book Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Ozhaguscodaywayquay told her when she was 13, she embarked on her vision quest to find her guardian spirit by fasting alone in a lodge painted black on a high hill.
[3] During Ozhaguscodaywayquay's fasting: "She dreamed continually of a white man, who approached her with a cup in his hand, saying "Poor thing!
Also, she dreamed of being on a high hill, which was surrounded by water, and from which she beheld many canoes full of Indians, coming to her and paying her homage; after this, she felt as if she was being carried up into the heavens, and as she looked down on the earth, she perceived it was on fire and said to herself, "All my relations will be burned!
[3] Jameson also noted that in her youth Ozhaguscodaywayquay "hunted and was accounted the surest eye and fleetest foot among the women of her tribe.
"[3] In 1790, Scots-Irish fur trader John Johnston traveled to Mackinac Island and then to Chequamegon by canoe, where he asked Waubjoeeg for permission to marry his youngest daughter, Ozhaguscodaywayquay.
However, it appears she was not consulted, as after the marriage she ran off to her grandfather, however her father found her, beat her with a stick, threatened to cut off her ear, and returned her to Johnston.
The community was made up mostly of Ojibwa, Ottawa and Métis peoples, centered on a trading post of the British-founded North West Company, whose headquarter was in Montreal.
Lewis, the oldest son, had served with the Royal Navy against the U.S. Taken prisoner during the war, he suffered poor treatment by US forces and rejected living under U.S. rule.
Ozhaguscodaywayquay's political influence grew after the War of 1812, as demonstrated by the story of she and her son, George, dissuaded Ojibwe leaders from attacking the treaty delegation led by Michigan Territory Governor Lewis Cass in 1820.
She was known as a physically active woman who caught and preserved local whitefish, regularly paddled her canoe across the broad St. Marys River (Michigan–Ontario), and annually spent time in the woods making large quantities of maple sugar, sometimes returning with as much as two tons.