Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 107 



for cruelty's sake, 20 which marks the red Indian 

 above all other savages, rendered these wars more 

 terrible than any others. For the hideous, unnama- 

 ble, unthinkable tortures practiced by the red men 

 on their captured foes, and on their foes' tender 

 women and helpless children, were such as we read 

 of in no other struggle, hardly even in the revolt- 

 ing pages that tell the deeds of the Holy Inquisi- 

 tion. It was inevitable indeed it was in many in- 

 stances proper that such deeds should awake in 

 the breasts of the whites the grimmest, wildest spirit 

 of revenge and hatred. 



The history of the border wars, both in the ways 

 they were begun and in the ways they were waged, 

 makes a long tale of injuries inflicted, suffered, and 

 mercilessly revenged. It could not be otherwise 

 when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, despising 

 all men not of their own color, were thrown in con- 

 tact with savages who esteemed cruelty and treach- 

 ery as the highest of virtues, and rapine and murder 

 as the worthiest of pursuits. Moreover, it was sadly 

 inevitable that the law-abiding borderer as well as 



20 Any one who has ever been in an encampment of wild 

 Indians, and has had the misfortune to witness the delight 

 the children take in torturing little animals, will admit that 

 the Indian's love of cruelty for cruelty's sake can not pos- 

 sibly be exaggerated. The young are so trained that when 

 old they shall find their keenest pleasure in inflicting pain 

 in its most appalling form. Among the most brutal white 

 borderers a man would be instantly lynched if he practiced 

 on any creature the fiendish torture which in an Indian 

 camp either attracts no notice at all, or else excites merely 

 laughter. 



