man here who is a provincial major. He is
very desirous to be at home with his wife and children. He
can do no good here, nor anywhere else. I believe your
excellency had better keep some of the young men, who have
no wives or children to care for, and let this old fellow go
home with me."

His artifice was effective. Putnam was released, and left
Montreal in company with his generous friend. He took
further part in the war, at the end of which, at the Indian
village of Cochuawaga, near Montreal, he met again the
Indian whose prisoner he had been. The kindly savage was
delighted to see him again, and entertained him with all the
friendship and hospitality at his command. At a later date,
when Putnam took part in the Pontiac war, he met again this
old chief, who was now an ally of the English, and who
marched side by side with his former prisoner to do battle
with the ancient enemies of his tribe.

A GALLANT DEFENCE.

The relations between the Indians and the European colonists
of America were, during nearly the whole colonial and much
of the subsequent period, what we now suggestively entitle
"strained." There were incessant aggressions of the
colonists, incessant reprisals by the aborigines, while the
warring whites of America never hesitated to use these
savage auxiliaries in their struggles for territory and
power. The history of this country is filled with details of
Indian assaults on forts and settlements, ambushes,
massacres, torturings, and acts of duplicity and ferocity
innumerable. Yet every instance of Indian hostility has
ended in the triumph of the whites, the advance of the army
of colonization a step further, and the gradual subjugation
of American savagery, animate and inanimate, to the
beneficent influences of civilization.

These Indian doings are frequently sickening in their
details. The story of America cannot be told without them.
Yet they are of one family, and largely of one species, and
an example or two will serve for the whole. In our next tale
the story of an Indian assault on the Daniel Boone
stronghold in Kentucky will be told. We purpose now to give
the interesting details of an attack on Fort Henry, a small
frontier work near where Wheeling now stands.

This attack was the work of Simon Girty, one of the most
detestable characters that the drama of American history
ever brought upon the stage. He was the offspring of crime,
his parents being irredeemably besotted and v