ps, and the allied Indians now took all of these but Detroit
and Fort Pitt. In the end they failed, and then they made peace again,
but still they kept up their forays along the English borders. They
stole horses and cattle, they burned houses and barns, they killed men,
women, and children, or carried them off into captivity. In the Ohio
country alone their captives counted hundreds, though the right number
could never be known, for they could easily be kept out of the way when
the tribes were summoned to give them up.

It was the same story in the West that it had been in the East, and the
North, and the South, wherever the savages fell upon the lonely farms or
the scattered hamlets of the frontiers, and it was not ended until our
own day, when the Indians were at last shut up in reservations.

[Illustration: Indians carry off the women 036R]

It was their custom to carry off the women and children. If the
children were hindered the march of their mothers, or if they cried and
endangered or annoyed their captors, they were torn a hawked, or their
brains were dashed out against the trees. But if they were well grown,
and strong enough to keep up with the rest, they were hurried sometimes
hundreds of miles into the wilderness. There the fate of all prisoners
was decided in solemn council of the tribe. If any men had been taken,
especially such as had made a hard fight for their freedom and had given
proof of their courage, they were commonly tortured to death by fire in
celebration of the victory won over them; though it sometimes happened
that young men who had caught the fancy or affection of the Indians were
adopted by the fathers of sons lately lost in battle. The older women
became the slaves and drudges of the squaws and the boys and girls were
parted from their mothers and scattered among the savage families. The
boys grew up hunters and trappers, like the Indian boys, and the girls
grew up like the Indian girls, and did the hard work which the warriors
always left to the women. The captives became as fond of their wild,
free life as the savages themselves, and they found wives and husbands
among the youths and maidens of their tribe. If they were given up to
their own people, as might happen in the brief intervals of peace, they
pined for the wilderness, which called to their homesick hearts, and
sometimes they stole back to it. They seem rarely to have been held for
ransom, as the captives of the Indians of th