bush, while their leader, as had been
arranged, entered their camp fearlessly and as a friend, and sat
himself down on the right of the circle, rapidly counting their
numbers as he did so. There were found to be twenty-two warriors
with one squaw. On being interrogated he stated that he had just
come from the British Fort Miami, and was on his way to stir up
the Indians to fight General Wayne. As he declared himself very
hungry the squaw hospitably put some hominy on the fire to warm
for his supper, of which he had intended to partake abundantly had
not a misapprehension on the part of his men hastened the moment
of action, and embittered all the satisfaction he would otherwise
have derived from his success. A motion of his hand was to have
been a signal to fire, each selecting his man; and the party,
conceiving that he had given this, acted prematurely, not only
depriving him of his supper, which was not yet ready, and of which
he stood in great need, but killing the unfortunate squaw who was
standing up stirring it at the time, and whom he had intended to
save. The next moment the formidable and dreaded tomahawk of the
captain went to work among the survivors, and out of the twenty-two
warriors but three escaped; he himself receiving a wound from a
ramrod shot through his wrist, and his lieutenant being hit by a
bullet in the thigh. The greatest havoc committed on this occasion
was by Wells himself, and it was his boast that in Wayne's war he
had slain a far greater number of Indians than he had killed
Americans throughout the contest with St. Clair; and cool indeed
must have been the determination of the man who could composedly
sit down alone and in the face of twenty-two warriors, some of whom
it might have been expected would have recognised him, or to whom
accident might have betrayed the proximity of his party, and resolve
to dispatch an ample supper before proceeding to the work of blood.
But these were the usages of the war in which he had been educated,
and a nobler and more generous heart than that of Captain Wells
never beat beneath the war-paint of an Indian.

Such was the man, the outline of whose story we have necessarily
condensed, who now, at the head of those Indians whom he once fought
for, and subsequently against, came to proffer his aid to the
unfortunate garrison of Fort Dearborn. What such an arm and such
daring might have accomplished, had circumstances combined to second
his efforts, can eas