le the whole village round
the camp. As soon as the warriors from the village appeared, four young
warriors from the camp, the two first carrying each a calumet,
approached the prisoner, chanting a song as they went, and taking him by
the arm, led him in triumph to the cabin, where he was to remain until
the announcement of his doom. The resident in this cabin, by their
immemorial usage, had the power of determining his fate, whether to be
tortured and burnt at the stake, or adopted into the tribe.

The present occupant of the cabin happened to be a woman, who had lost a
son during the war. It is very probable that she was favorably impressed
towards him by noting his fine person, and his firm and cheerful
visage--circumstances which impress the women of the red people still
more strongly than the men. She contemplated him stedfastly for some
time, and sympathy and humanity triumphed, and she declared that she
adopted him in place of the son she had lost. The two young men, who
bore the calumet, instantly unpinioned his hands, treating him with
kindness and respect. Food was brought him, and he was informed that he
was considered as a son, and she, who had adopted him, as his mother. He
was soon made aware, by demonstrations that could not be dissembled or
mistaken, that he was actually loved, and trusted, as if he really were,
what his adoption purported to make him. In a few days he suffered no
other penalty of captivity than inability to return to his family. He
was sufficiently instructed in Indian customs to know well, that any
discovered purpose or attempt to escape would be punished with instant
death.

Strange caprice of inscrutable instincts and results of habit! A
circumstance, apparently fortuitous and accidental, placed him in the
midst of an Indian family, the female owner of which loved him with the
most disinterested tenderness, and lavished upon him all the
affectionate sentiments of a mother towards a son. Had the die of his
lot been cast otherwise, all the inhabitants of the village would have
raised the death song, and each individual would have been as fiercely
unfeeling to torment him, as they were now covetous to show him
kindness. It is astonishing to see, in their habits of this sort, no
interval between friendship and kindness, and the most ingenious and
unrelenting barbarity. Placed between two posts, and his arms and feet
extended between them, nearly in the form of a person suffering
crucif