CHAPTEE XXXVI. 



CAPTIVES. 



THE plains Indians rarely make captives of men unless 

 they have some object to gain or special animosity to 

 gratify. Under ordinary circumstances they content 

 themselves with terminating the existence of a man 

 captive in the most convenient way consistent with a 

 proper amount of suffering. The death of a captive by 

 torture of fire is now very unusual, and since I came 

 upon the plains I have known of but few instances. 



In 1855 a small party of the 8th United States In- 

 fantry, out from Fort Davis, Texas, looking for timber to 

 build the post, were surrounded by a large force of 

 Apaches, and all killed except a drummer-boy of twelve 

 or thirteen years of age. He was captured and taken to 

 the Indian camp, and, speaking Spanish with tolerable 

 fluency, was questioned at length by the captors, the 

 interpreter being a Mexican boy captured some years 

 before, and from whom I afterwards learned the following 

 particulars. The boy's answers to them proving to the 

 Indians that their scheme of attacking the post was sure 

 to lead to disaster to them, they became very angry and 

 turned him over to the squaws. These fiends in human 

 shape stripped and tied him to a tree, and for some hours 

 tormented him in every way their ingenuity could devise 

 without endangering life. Becoming tired of this, they 

 procured some ' fat ' * pine knots, and, splitting them into 

 small splinters, stuck them into the skin until the un- 



1 A term applied to wood very rich in resinous matter. 



