avine, and in another moment
began crawling noisily about us, chattering with our surly captors, or
scowling into our faces with savage eyes boding no good. It would be
unjust were I to write that these fellows were a brutal lot, as such
words would be void of that truth I seek to convey. I lived to learn
that many among them had the stuff of which true men are made; yet,
nevertheless, they were savages, scarcely touched by the virtues or
vices of civilization, a people nursing within their memory a great
wrong, and inflamed by the fierce passions of battle. Gazing about on
the stiffening forms of their stricken warriors, all alike exhibited in
eyes and gestures how eagerly they longed for the hour of vengeance,
when implacable hate might have full vent in the unutterable agony of
their victims. I gazed up into their scowling, distorted faces,
imagining a final moment of reckoning was at hand; yet some authority,
either of chief or tribal custom, restrained their pitiless hatred,
reserving us for longer, more intense suffering.

But the wild thirst for blood was mirrored in those fierce eyes glaring
down into mine, and echoed in the shrill cries with which they marked
us yet alive for their barbaric ingenuity to practise upon at leisure.
Even as I observed this, realizing from my knowledge of Indian nature
that our ultimate fate would be infinitely worse than merciful death in
battle, I could not remain blind to the wide difference between these
naked warriors and those other savages with whom my wandering border
life had made me familiar. My awakened memory dwelt upon the peculiar
tribal characteristics of the Mingoes north of the Ohio, the Kaskaskias
in the Illinois country, the Shawnees, the Cherokees, even the Creeks,
in whose villages I had dwelt as a friend, and beside whose young men I
had hunted as a brother. Yet here was surely a distinct race, one less
clearly marked with those features peculiarly Indian,--the cheek-bones
not prominent, the form of nose more varied, the skin decidedly
lighter, the heads better shapen, and the figures more thoroughly
developed. More, their language had little of the guttural so
universal among Eastern tribes, but had a peculiar, sharp, hissing
sound; so, although the faces peering into mine were wild and ferocious
enough to leave no doubt as to their barbarous nature, or our probable
fate, yet these peculiarities, with the total absence of paint, such as
disfigures and r