yo The Winning of the West 



wounded, who fell into their hands. There is no 

 record of the torture of any of the captives, but there 

 was one single instance of cannibalism. The savage 

 Chippewas from the far-off north devoured one of 

 the slain soldiers, probably in a spirit of ferocious 

 bravado; the other tribes expressed horror at the 

 deed. 35 The Indians were rich with the spoil. They 

 .got horses, tents, guns, axes, powder, clothing, and 

 blankets in short everything their hearts prized. 

 Their loss was comparatively slight ; it may not have 

 been one-twentieth that of the whites. They did 

 not at the moment follow up their victory, each band 

 going off with its own share of the booty. But the 

 triumph was so overwhelming, and the reward so 

 great, that the war spirit received a great impetus 

 in all the tribes. The bands of warriors that 

 marched against the frontier were more numerous, 

 more formidable, and bolder than ever. 



In the following January Wilkinson with a hun- 

 dred and fifty mounted volunteers marched to the 

 battle-field to bury the slain. The weather was bit- 

 terly cold, snow lay deep on the ground, and some of 

 the volunteers were frost bitten. 36 Four miles from 

 the scene of the battle, where the pursuit had ended, 

 they began to firid the bodies on the road, and close 



35 Brickell's Narrative. 



36 McBride's" Pioneer Biography," John Reily's Narrative. 

 This expedition, in which not a single hostile Indian was en- 

 countered, has been transmuted by Withers and one or two 

 other border historians into a purely fictitious expedition of 

 revenge in which hundreds of Indians were slain on the field 

 of St. Clair's disaster. 



