ar the fort. Here the wife of
Wau-bee-nee-mah, an Illinois chief, perceiving the exhausted condition of
Mrs. Helm, took a kettle, and dipping up some water from the stream which
flowed sluggishly by them, threw into it some maple sugar, and, stirring
it up with her hand, gave her to drink. "It was," says Mrs. Helm, "the
most delicious draught I had ever taken, and her kindness of manner, amid
so much atrocity, touched my heart." Her attention, however, was soon
directed to other objects. The fort, after the troops had marched out,
became a scene of plunder. The cattle were shot down as they ran at large,
and lay dead, or were dying around her. It called up afresh a remark of
Ensign Ronan's, made before; "Such," said he, "is to be our fate--to be
shot down like brutes."

The wounded prisoners, we have already remarked, were not included in the
stipulation made on the battle-field, as the _Indians understood it_. On
reaching, therefore, the Pottawatomie camp, a scene followed which beggars
description. A wounded soldier, lying on the ground, was violently
assaulted by an old squaw, infuriated by the loss of friends or excited by
the murderous scenes around her--who, seizing a pitchfork, attacked the
wretched victim, now helpless, and exposed to the burning rays of the sun,
his wounds already aggravated by its heat, and he writhing in torture.
During the succeeding night, five other wounded prisoners were
tomahawked.

Those unwounded remained in the wigwams of their captors. The work of
plunder being now completed, the fort next day was set on fire. A fair and
equal distribution of all the finery belonging to the garrison had
apparently been made, and shawls and ribands and feathers were scattered
about the camp in great profusion.

After suffering many hardships, Mrs. Helm, Mrs. Heald, and the surviving
male prisoners were ransomed and sent back to their friends. A few of
them, however, were not set at liberty until after the battle of the
Thames.

THE TWO FRIENDS.

In August, 1786, Mr. Francis Downing, then a lad, was living in a fort,
where subsequently some iron works were erected by Mr. Jacob Myers, which
are now known by the name of Slate Creek works. About the 16th, a young
man belonging to the fort, called upon Downing, and requested his
assistance in hunting for a horse which had strayed away on the preceding
evening. Downing readily complied, and the two friends traversed the woods
in every directio