ult showed
that it was a master-stroke of policy on Boone's part. He knew the
nature of the Indians, and foresaw that they would forthwith return
home with their prisoners, and thus save Boonesborough from attack.

Had the Indians gone on to that place, by showing their prisoners
and threatening to put them to the torture, they might have obtained
important results. But they did nothing of the kind. As Boone had
calculated, they went home with their prisoners and booty.

Captain Boone has been censured for the surrender of his men, which
he made at his own capture, and at a subsequent period was tried by
court-martial and acquitted. This was a just decision. The surrender
caused the Indians to return home with their prisoners instead of
attacking Boonesborough, which would almost certainly have been taken
and destroyed if this surrender had not been made.

Elated with their unexpected success, the Indians now returned at once
to old Chilicothe, the principal town of the Shawnees, on the Little
Miami, treating their prisoners, during a march of three days in very
cold and inclement weather, as well as they fared themselves, as
regarded fire and provisions. Boone and his companions were kept in
captivity by the Indians, and closely watched for several weeks, when
the old pioneer and ten of his men were conducted to Detroit, then a
British garrison, and all but Boone presented to the commandant, by whom
they were all well treated. For the old pioneer himself, the Indians had
conceived a particular liking; and they stubbornly refused to give him
up, though several gentlemen of Detroit were very anxious they should
leave him, and the commandant offered to ransom him by a liberal sum.
He was therefore compelled to accompany them back to Chillicothe, their
town on the Little Miami, which they reached after a march of fifteen
days.

Boone was now formally adopted as a son in one of the Indian families.
"The forms of the ceremony of adoption," says Mr. Peck,[36] "were often
severe and ludicrous. The hair of the head is plucked out by a painful
and tedious operation, leaving a tuft, some three or four inches in
diameter, on the crown, for the scalp-lock, which is cut and dressed up
with ribbons and feathers. The candidate is then taken into the river in
a state of nudity, and there thoroughly washed and rubbed, 'to take all
his white blood out.' This ablution is usually performed by females. He
is then taken to the council-ho