BARBARITIES OF SAVAGE WARFARE. 97 



distressing features, for their implacable vengeance as 

 a rule spares neither age nor sex, and it is considered 

 equally meritorious for a savage warrior to destroy an 

 infant or an aged woman, as to take the life of any 

 one of the warriors attached to the enemy's camp. 

 The red man has however always been conspicuous 

 for his ruthless barbarity, the torture of prisoners 

 following their capture where time and circumstances 

 admit of it, almost as a matter of course; nor does 

 his resentment end with the death of an enemy, for 

 even the bodies of the fallen are almost always subjected 

 to mutilation; nor is it at all difficult, according to 

 Colonel Dodge: 



"to tell from the nature of the mutilations whether the 

 bodies fell into their hands before or after death; if it be 

 pierced with many bullet holes, stuck full of arrows, cut or 

 slashed with deep and careless gashes, the spirit had passed 

 before the Indians got possession; but artistic dissections, 

 Mayings, dislocations, the breaking and splitting of fingers and 

 toes, etc., indicate that the poor fellow went to his long home 

 with all the accompaniments of pain and horror that these 

 devils can devise." * 



The process of regular torture practised upon captives 

 is a subject over which we would willingly draw a 

 veil, were its perpetration not already notorious; and 

 we extract the following details from Colonel Dodge's 

 book, which may be regarded as a high authority on 

 all matters concerning the Plains Indians: 



"The Indian" (as the Colonel remarks) "is thoroughly 

 skilled in all methods of torture, and well knows that by fire 

 it is the most exquisite, if it can only be prolonged. He there- 



* Our Wild Indians, or 33 Years' Experience among the Red Men of 

 the Great West, by Lt.-Colonel Richard J. Dodge, U.S.A., 1882, p. 538. 



VOL. II. 7 



