When the fight began, he said he would not stand for
the Shawnees to shoot him down like a wild pigeon, and he left the ranks
and took to a fallen log, where he fired with unfailing aim. But he
could not be kept from leaving it to scalp the other Indians as he shot
them, and his own turn to be shot and scalped came at last.

The battle ground was covered with a thick slush from the new-fallen
snow, and this made the retreat more exhausting. A poor mother, perhaps
one of the soldiers' or pioneers' wives, staggered along with a baby
in her arms till she fell with it. The ranger McDowell then carried it
awhile for her. When he gave it back, she threw it away in the snow, to
save her own life, and the Indians found it, and took it to Sandusky,
where they brought it up as their own.

Two years after, when a detachment of Wayne's army camped upon the scene
of the carnage, they had to scrape away the heaps of bones and carry
them out of their tents before they could make their beds, and they
buried six hundred skulls on the field. Such is war, and we cannot look
too closely on its hideous face, which is often so alluringly painted
that we forget it is the face of a pitiless demon.

XII. THE INDIAN WARS AND WAYNE'S VICTORY.

The Indians who had been so well generaled and had fought so ably,
failed as usual to follow up their victory by moving on the American
settlements in force. They kept on harassing the pioneers in small war
parties, but gave the country time to send an army, thoroughly equipped
and thoroughly disciplined, against them. They made a second attack on
the Americans on the old battle ground where General Wayne had built
his Fort Recovery, but they were beaten off with severe loss, though in
their attack they had the aid of many white Canadians and even of some
British officers, or at least of men wearing the uniform of British
officers.

By the treaty of 1783 Great Britain agreed to give us the whole West
below a certain line, but when the time came for the surrender, she
refused to yield the forts south of this line. With the bad faith
of wanton power she kept her posts at Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and
Mackinaw, because we were weak and she was strong; and from these points
her agents abetted the savages in their war upon the American frontiers.
Just before the battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne won his victory,
the Lieutenant Governor of Canada marched a force of Canadian militia
and British reg