and they used tenderly the little children
whom they stole. A settler's cabin was
being plundered by Indians, who brandished
tomahawks over the heads of the women in it
to compel them to yield all. An Indian
squaw began to tear the clothes from the
stout-hearted mother of the house, who,
resenting so much freedom, dealt the squaw
a blow in the face that knocked her down.
Would the uplifted tomahawk descend?
Certainly not. The Indian men shouted
with laughter, and cried, "Very good, white
squaw."  A mother in a dismantled house
had in the oven one loaf of bread, when a
stalwart Indian was seen approaching. She
hid the bread under a coverlet as he entered.
He said, "Me want bread." "I have none,"
she answered. "Ah! me smell 'em," he
replied, and at once drew the loaf from where
it lay. "You shan't have that bread," said
the mother, struggling to wrest it from him;
"I want it to keep the children from starving."
The loaf broke between them, and
the Indian, grinning, went away, contented
with his half.

A worthy Pennsylvanian quaker, expecting
the Indians, and, as a non-combatant, sure
of his life, but supposing that all would be
taken from him and his household except the
clothes they wore, put on his wedding-suit of
the best Quaker's cloth. His wife locked her
best clothes in a box, and covered it with
rubbish. The wife's fine raiment escaped; but
the first act of the Indians was to compel the
man in drab to strip, and pass his clothes
over to a Mohawk chief. This chief then
marched away, glorious in a full costume of
Quaker's broadcloth, festooned with a belt
of recent scalps. Another non-combatant
quaker, warned of an attack upon his granary,
entrusted the defence to his two buxom
daughters; who, when the plunderers were
on the threshold, fired into their faces boiling
water from a gun-squirt, and so put them to
instant rout. But in this case the foemen
were the Pennsylvanian boys. Of course,
the recollections of the strife at Wyoming
are not free from incidents of direct cruelty
by the Indians to women. One old lady
used to tell of her own capture in the days of
horror, with a beautiful girl of her acquaintance,
whom she saw mangled cruelly, and
killed on the road. When they came to the
first camping-place, she was herself ordered
to dress a large belt of scalps, being
instructed by the squaws. She was compelled
for her life to stretch them, beat them
between her hands, and lay them out to dry.
They were the scalps of her friends and
neighbours. Some she knew; and upon one
she thought she recognised the grey hairs of
her mother. She broke into tears, but by
the lifted tomahawk, and the significant
movement of the scalping knife near her own
head, she was compelled to end her task.
She found afterwards that her mother had
not been killed.

One Daniel M'Allum was stolen by the
Mohawks when he was two years and a half
old. In days of peace, an old squaw had
been in the habit of coming to play with him,
and pet him. When the war broke out she
stole him. At the close of the war he was a
stout lad, and a perfect Indian. When the
prisoners were required to be given up,
Daniel said that his old Indian mother
cried bitterly. She filled a little bag with
parched corn, and dried venison, and, putting
it into his hand, went with him to the place
of rendezvous; but her heart failed her
before she reached it: pointing out the way
to him, she flung her blanket over her head,
and turned about and ran. He paused,
looked after her, then set off in pursuit. He
could not bear the separation. She eluded
him, and he was found sobbing by the
roadside. His own mother joyfully received him,
but to the last his Indian mother was the
one who had his heart.

The Indians descended on the house of
Jonathan Slocum, killed at the door a boy
who wore a soldier's coat, and scalped him
with a knife that he was grinding. They
then seized a little lame boy, Mrs. Slocum's
son, and the mother rushed out of hiding to
protect him. At the same time they espied
her little daughter Frances, five years old,
and carried her off, screaming to mamma for
help, holding the locks of hair from her eyes
with one hand, and stretching out the other.
So the poor mother remembered her. She
was barefoot when she was seized, her
little shoes having been put by for winter
use, and the sleepless mother, picturing to
herself cruel marches, dwelt painfully upon
her child's bare feet, and to the last,—for
to the end of her days no search brought
tidings of her,—grieved about the shoes.
In the course of years, her brothers became
thriving men, and never—never even when
they grew to be old—abated in their search
for the lost sister. At last, by a strange
chance, she was discovered, when she was
an old woman living with her daughter,
her son-in-law, and her grandchildren, the
honoured chief of an Indian village, bound
to the Indians by two marriages and by a
long life that she declared to have been a
most happy one. Her brothers and their
children made a long journey to see her, and
to win her back to them if they could; but
she abided where she was fast rooted and
died an Indian. When the white frontier
over-ran her village, the Slocum family had
interest to secure for her and her heirs an
assured permanent title to the lands about her
dwelling, and she died in them known only as
a favoured Indian to the surrounding settlers
Her feet had not been bruised in the march
when she was stolen. She had been carried
over all rough places; a little birch cup had
been made for her to drink from; at all
meals the choicest food had been selected for
her; she had been dressed in gay beads, and