pretty good fellows, who would not wrong Indians, yet they
tolerated for a long time the presence of men who did not scruple to
boast that they stole horses from the latter; while our peaceful
neighbors, the Grosventres, likewise permitted two notorious red-skinned
horse thieves to use their reservation as a harbor of refuge, and a
starting-point from which to make forays against the cattlemen.

24. The expression "too horrible to mention" is to be taken literally,
not figuratively. It applies equally to the fate that has befallen every
white man or woman who has fallen into the power of hostile plains
Indians during the last ten or fifteen years. The nature of the wild
Indian has not changed. Not one man in a hundred, and not a single
woman, escapes torments which a civilized man cannot look another in the
face and so much as speak of. Impalement on charred stakes, finger-nails
split off backwards, finger-joints chewed off, eyes burned out--these
tortures can be mentioned, but there are others equally normal and
customary which cannot even be hinted at, especially when women are the
victims.

25. For the particular incident see M'Ferrin's "History of Methodism in
Tennessee," p. 145.

26. As was done to the father of Simon Girty. Any history of any Indian
inroad will give examples such as I have mentioned above. See McAfee
MSS., John P. Hale's "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," De Haas' "Indian Wars,"
Wither's "Border War," etc. In one respect, however, the Indians east of
the Mississippi were better than the tribes of the plains from whom our
borders have suffered during the present century; their female captives
were not invariably ravished by every member of the band capturing them,
as has ever been the custom among the horse Indians. Still, they were
often made the concubines of their captors.

27. The missionaries called themselves United Brethren; to outsiders
they were known as Moravians. Loskiel, "History of the Mission of the
United Brethren," London, 1794. Heckewelder, "Narrative of the Mission
of the United Brethren," Phil., 1820.

CHAPTER V.

THE BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 1769-1774.

Along the western frontier of the colonies that were so soon to be the
United States, among the foothills of the Alleghanies, on the slopes of
the wooded mountains, and in the long trough-like valleys that lay
between the ranges, dwelt a peculiar and characteristically American
people.

These frontier folk, the p