squaws in the mean time throwing coals and hot ashes on his body, so that in a little time he had nothing but coals to walk on. In the midst of his sufferings, he begged of the noted Simon Girty to take pity on him and shoot him. Girty tauntingly answered, "You see I have no gun, I cannot shoot ;" and laughed heartily at the scene. After suffering about three hours he became faint and fell down on his face. An Indian then scalped him, and an old squaw threw a quantity of burning coals on the place from which the scalp was taken. After this he rose and walked round the post a little, but did not live much longer. After he expired, his body was thrown into the fire and consumed to ashCol. Crawford's son and son-in-law were executed at the Shawnee towns.

es.

Dr. Knight was doomed to be burned at a town about forty miles distant from Sandusky, and committed to the care of a young Indian to be taken there. The first day they traveled about twenty-five miles, and encamped for the night. In the morning the gnats being very troublesome, the doctor requested the Indian to untie him, that he might help him to make a fire to keep them off. With this request the Indian complied. While the Indian was on his knees and elbows, blowing the fire, the doctor caught up a piece of a tent pole which had been burned in two, about eighteen inches long, with which he struck the Indian on the head with all his might, so as to knock him forward into the fire. The stick however broke, so that the Indian, although severely hurt, was not killed, but immediately sprang up. On this the doctor caught up the Indian's gun to shoot him, but drew back the cock with so much violence that he broke the main spring. The Indian ran off with a hideous yelling. Dr. Knight then made the best of his way home, which he reached in twentyone days, almost famished to death. The gun being of no use, after carrying it a day or two he left it behind. On his journey he subsisted on roots, a few young birds and berries

A Mr. Slover, who had been a prisoner among the Indians, and was one of the pilots of the army, was also taken prisoner to one of the Shawnee towns on the Scioto. After being there a few days, and as he thought, in favor with the Indians, a council of the chiefs was held, in which it was resolved that he should be burned. The fires were kindled, and he was blackened and tied to a stake, in an uncovered end of the councilhouse. Just as they were about commencing the torture, there came on suddenly a heavy thunder gust, with a great fall of rain, which put out the fires. After the rain was over the Indians concluded that it was then too late to commence and finish the torture that day, and therefore postponed it till the next day. Slover was then loosed from the stake, conducted to an empty house, to a log of which he was fastened with a buffalo tug round his neck, while his arms were pinioned behind him with a cord. Until late in the night the Indians sat up smoking and talking. They frequently asked Slover how he would like to eat fire the next day. At length one of them laid down and went to sleep; the other continued smoking talking with Slover. Sometime after midnight, he also laid down and went to sleep. Slover then resolved to make an effort to get loose if pos sible, and soon extricated one of his hands from the cord, and then fell to work with the tug round his neck, but without effect. He had not been long engaged in these efforts, before one of the Indians got up and smoked his pipe awhile. During this time Slover kept very still for fear of an examination. The Indian lying down, the prisoner renewed his efforts, but for some time without effect, and he resigned himself to his fate. After resting for awhile, he resolved to make another and a last effort, and as he related, put his hand to the tug, and without difficulty slipped it over his head. The day was just then breaking. He sprang over a fence into a cornfield, but had proceeded but a little distance in the field, before he came across à squaw and several children, lying asleep under a mulberry tree. He then changed

his course for part of the commons of the town, on which he saw some horses feeding. Passing over the fence from the field, he found a piece of an old quilt. This he took with him, and was the only covering he had. He then untied the cord from the other arm, which by this time was very much swelled. Having selected, as he thought, the best horse on the commons, he tied the cord to his lower jaw, mounted him and rode off at full speed. The horse gave out about 10 o'clock, so that he had to leave him. He then traveled on foot with a stick in one hand, with which he put the weeds behind him, for fear of being tracked by the Indians. In the other he carried a bunch of bushes to brush the gnats and musketoes from his naked body. Being perfectly acquainted with the route, he reached the river Ohio in a short time, almost famished with hunger and exhausted with fatigue.

Thus ended this disastrous campaign. It was the last one which took place in this section of the country during the revolutionary contest of the Americans with the mother country. It was undertaken with the very worst of views, those of murder and plunder. It was conducted without sufficient means to encounter, with any prospect of success, the large force of Indians opposed to ours in the plains of Sandusky. It was conducted without that subordination and discipline, so requisite to insure success in any hazardous enterprise, and it ended in a total discomfiture. Never did an enterprise more completely fail of attaining its object. - Never, on any occasion, had the ferocious savages more ample revenge for the murder of their pacific friends, than that which they obtained on this occasion.

Should I be asked what considerations led so great a number of people into this desperate enterprise?-why with so small a force and such slender means they pushed on so far as the plains of Sandusky ?--I reply, that many believed that the Moravian Indians, taking no part in the war, and having given offense to the warriors on several occasions, their belligerent friends would

not take up arms in their behalf. In this conjecture they were sadly mistaken. They did defend them with all the force at their command, and no wonder, for notwithstanding their christian and pacific principles, the warriors still regarded the Moravians as their relations, whom it was their duty to defend.

The reflections which naturally arise out of the history of the Indian war in the western country, during our revolutionary contest with Great Britain, are not calculated to do honor to human nature, even in its civilized state. On our side, indeed, as to our infant government, the case is not so bad. Our congress faithfully endeavored to prevent the Indians from taking part in the war on either side. The English government, on the other hand, made allies of as many of the Indian nations as they could, and they imposed no restraint on their. savage mode of warfare. On the contrary, the commandants at their posts along our western frontier received and paid the Indians for scalps and prisoners. Thus the skin of a white man's or even a woman's head served in the hands of the Indian as current coin, which he exchanged for arms and ammunition, for the farther prosecution of his barbarous warfare, and clothing to cover his half naked body. Were not these rewards the price of blood?-of blood, shed in a cruel manner, on an extensive scale; but without advantage to that government which employed the savages in their warfare against their relatives and fellowchristians, and paid for their murders by the piece!

The enlightened historian must view the whole of the Indian war, from the commencement of the revolutionary contest, in no other light than a succession of the most wanton murders of all ages, from helpless infancy to decrepit old age, and of both sexes, without object and without effect.

On our side, it is true, the pressure of the war along our Atlantic border was such that our government could not furnish the means for making a conquest of the Indian nations at war against us. The people of the

western country, poor as they were at that time, and unaided by government, could not subdue them. Our campaigns, hastily undertaken, without sufficient force and means, and illy executed, resulted in nothing beneficial. On the other hand, the Indians, with the aids their allies could give them in the western country, were not able to make a conquest of the settlement on this side of the mountains. On the contrary, our settlements and the forts belonging to them became stronger and stronger from year to year during the whole continuance of the wars. It was therefore a war of mutual, but unavailing slaughter, devastation and revenge, over whose record humanity still drops a tear of regret, but that tear cannot efface its disgraceful history,

CHAPTER IX.

Attack on Rice's fort.

This fort consisted of some cabins and a small blockhouse, and was, in dangerous times, the residence and place of refuge for twelve families of its immediate neighborhood. It was situated on Buffalo creek, about twelve or fifteen miles from its junction with the river Ohio.

Previously to the attack on this fort, which took place in the month of September 1782, several of the few men belonging to the fort had gone to Hagerstown, to exchange their peltry and furs for salt, iron and ammunition, as was the usual custom of those times. They had gone on this journey somewhat earlier that season than usual, because there had been "a still time," that is, no recent alarms of the Indians.

A few days before the attack on this fort, about 300 Indians had made their last attack on Wheeling