ans, for the purpose of
exciting them to activity and perseverance, in carrying on the siege;
but that this chief seriously meditated any such outrage, either
against general Harrison or his associates, is not to be credited but
on the best authority. It will be recollected that Tecumseh, when but a
youth, succeeded by his personal influence, in putting an end to the
custom of burning prisoners, then common among a branch of the
Shawanoes. In 1810, at a conference with general Harrison, in
Vincennes, he made an agreement that prisoners and women and children,
in the event of hostilities between the whites and the Indians, should
be protected; and there is no evidence that this compact was ever
violated by him; or indeed, that through the whole course of his
eventful life, he ever committed violence upon a prisoner, or suffered
others to do so without promptly interfering for the captive. To
suppose, then, that he really intended to permit general Harrison, or
those who fought with him on the Wabash, to be burned, would have been
at variance with the whole tenor of his life; and particularly with his
manly and magnanimous conduct at the close of the assault upon fort
Meigs.

[Footnote A: The Chillicothe Fredonian.]

The prisoners captured on the fifth, were, taken down to Proctor's
head-quarters and confined in fort Miami, where the Indians were
permitted to amuse, themselves by firing at the crowd, or at any
particular individual. Those whose taste led them to inflict a more
cruel and savage death, led their victims to the gateway, where, under
the eye of general Proctor and his officers, they were coolly
tomahawked and scalped. Upwards of twenty prisoners were thus, in the
course of two hours, massacred in cold blood, by those to whom they had
voluntarily surrendered. At the same time, the chiefs of the different
tribe were holding a council to determine the fate of the remaining
captives, when Tecumseh and colonel Elliott came down from the
batteries to the scene of carnage.

A detailed account of the noble conduct of the former in regard to
these captives is contained in the following extract from a letter,[A]
upon the accuracy of which reliance may be placed. The writer, after
contrasting the brave and humane Tecumseh with the cruel and reckless
Proctor, says:

"The most unfortunate event of that contest, I presume you will admit
to have been the defeat of colonel Dudley. I will give you a statement
made to me