hich had befallen their companions who were hunting in the
woods. Even if they had heard the report of the rifles, they could only
have supposed that it was from the guns of the hunters firing at game.

The evening twilight was fading away. The whole party was concealed in
a dense canebrake which fringed the stream. Two of the Indians were
sent forward as a decoy--a shameful decoy--to lure into the hands of
two hundred warriors an unarmed man, two women, and eight or ten
children. The Indians picked out some of their best marksmen and hid
them behind trees and logs near the river. They were to shoot down the
Indians whom others should lure to cross the stream.

The creek which separated the island from the mainland was deep, but
not so wide but that persons without much difficulty could make
themselves heard across it. Two of the Indians went down to the
river-side, and hailed those at the wigwams, asking them to send a
canoe across to take them over. An Indian woman came down to the bank
and informed them that the canoe was on their side, that two hunters
had crossed the creek that morning, and had not yet returned. These
were the two men who had been so inhumanly murdered. Immediate search
was made for the canoe, and it was found a little above the spot where
the men were hiding. It was a very large buoyant birch canoe,
constructed for the transportation of a numerous household, with all
their goods, and such game as they might take.

This they loaded with warriors to the water's edge, and they began
vigorously to paddle over to the island. When the one solitary Indian
man there saw this formidable array approaching he fled into the woods.
The warriors landed, and captured the two women and the little
children, ten in number, and conveyed their prisoners, with the plunder
of the wigwams, back across the creek to their own encampment. This was
not a very brilliant achievement to be accomplished by an army of two
hundred warriors aided by a detachment of sixteen white men under Major
Russel. What finally became of these captives we know not. It is
gratifying to be informed by David Crockett that they did not kill
either the squaws or the pappooses.

The company then marched through the silent wilderness, a distance of
about thirty miles east, to the Conecuh River. This stream, in its
picturesque windings through a region where even the Indian seldom
roved, flowed into the Scambia, the principal river which pours its