long
astray, and the path between you and us stopped, we extend this belt
that it may be again cleared.... While you hold it fast by one end, and
we by the other, we shall always be able to discover anything that may
disturb our friendship."

Bouquet answered that he had heard them with pleasure, and that in
receiving these last prisoners from them he joined with them in burying
the bones of those who had fallen in the war, so that the place might no
more be known. "The peace you ask for, you shall now have," he said, but
he told them that it was his business to make war, and the business of
others to make peace, and he instructed them how and with whom they were
to treat. He took hostages from them, and he dealt with the other tribes
on the same terms as they brought in their captives. On the 18th of
November, he broke up his camp and marched back to Fort Pitt, with more
than two hundred men, women, and children whom he had delivered from
captivity among the savages.

It is believed that six hundred others were never given up. The captives
were not always glad to go back to their old homes, and the Indians had
sometimes to use force in bringing them to the camp where their friends
and kindred who had come with Bouquet's army were waiting to receive
them. Many had been taken from their homes when they were so young that
they could not remember them, and they had learned to love the Indians,
who had brought them up like their own children, and treated them as
lovingly as the fathers and mothers from whom they had been stolen. In
the charm of the savage life these children of white parents had really
become savages; and certain of the young girls had grown up and married
Indian husbands to whom they were tenderly attached. The scenes of
parting between all these were very touching on both sides, and it is
told of one Indian who had married a Virginian girl that he followed
her back to the frontier at the risk of his life from her people. The
Indians gave up the captives often so dear to them, with tears and
lamentations, while on the other hand their kindred waited to receive
them in an anguish of hope and fear. As the captives came into the
camp, parents sought among them for the little ones they had lost, and
husbands for the wives who had been snatched from their desolated homes.
Brothers and sisters met after a parting so long that one or other had
forgotten the language they once spoke in common. The Indians still h