30 The Winning of the West 



bushed and destroyed. The settlers were shot down 

 as they sat by their hearthstones in the evening, or 

 plowed the ground during the day; the lurking In- 

 dians crept up and killed them while they still- 

 hunted the deer, or while they lay in wait for the 

 elk beside the well-beaten game trails. 



The captured women and little ones were driven 

 off to the far interior. The weak among them, the 

 young children, and the women heavy with child, 

 were tomahawked and scalped as soon as their steps 

 faltered. The able-bodied, who could stand the ter- 

 rible fatigue, and reached their journey's end, suf- 

 fered various fates. Some were burned at the stake, 

 others were sold to the French or British traders, 

 and long afterward made their escape, or were ran- 

 somed by the relatives. Still others were kept in the 

 Indian camps, the women becoming the slaves or 

 wives of the warriors, 12 while the children were 

 adopted into the tribe, and grew up precisely like 

 their little red-skinned playmates. Sometimes, when 

 they had come to full growth, they rejoined the 

 whites; but generally they were enthralled by the 

 wild freedom and fascination of their forest life, 

 and never forsook their adopted tribesmen, remain- 

 ing inveterate foes of their own color. Among 



12 Occasionally we come across records of the women after- 

 ward making their escape ; very rarely they took their half- 

 breed babies with them. De Haas mentions one such case 

 where the husband, though he received his wife well, always 

 hated the copper-colored addition to his family; the latter, 

 by the way, grew up a thorough Indian, could not be edu- 

 cated, and finally ran away, joined the Revolutionary army, 

 and was never heard of afterward. 



