nglish king. The Revolutionary War broke out,
and the Indians became the allies of the British. Then, in 1783, their
country was given up to the United States, and they still fought their
old enemies, who had not changed their nature by changing their name to
Americans. In 1794, the great battle of Fallen Timbers was fought on the
banks of the Maumee, and the long struggle was ended.

It had grown more and more fierce and cruel as time passed, and only
three years before General Wayne won his lasting victory, General St.
Clair had suffered his terrible defeat by the Indians. Through this
defeat, the power of the whites in the West was shaken as it had never
been before; the savages were filled with pride and hope by the greatest
triumph they had achieved over their enemies; and all the settlements in
the Northwestern Territory were endangered.

Perhaps I had better say seemed endangered. The Indians were really less
to be feared than at any time before. They were weaker, and the whites
were stronger. They were striving against destiny; and though their fate
was sealed with the blood of their enemies, their fate was sealed. All
the chances that had favored them had favored them in vain, and neither
their wily courage nor their pitiless despair availed them against the
people who outnumbered them, as the stems of the harvest field outnumber
the trees of the forest.

V. THE CAPTIVITY OF JAMES SMITH

The stories of captivity among the Ohio Indians during the war that
ended in 1794 would of themselves fill a much larger book than this is
meant to be. Most of them were never set down, but some of them were
very thrillingly told, and others very touchingly, either by the
captives themselves, or by such of their friends as were better able to
write them out. One, at least, is charming, and the narrative of
Colonel James Smith deserves a chapter by itself, not only because it is
charming, but because it shows the Indians in a truer and kindlier light
than they were often able to show themselves.

Smith was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, which in 1737 was the
frontier of the white settlement, and he was taken prisoner in 1755, by
a small party of Delawares, near Bedford, while he was helping to cut a
road for the passage of General Braddock's ill-fated expedition against
the French. The Indians hurried from the English border, and forced him
to run with them nearly the whole way to Fort Duquesne, which afterward