of the tragedy of this form of warfare when we read of this gathering as
described by an eye-witness:

"Poor women who had traveled one hundred miles from the back
settlements of Pennsylvania, and New England appeared here with
anxious looks and aching hearts, not knowing whether their
children were alive or dead, or how to identify their children if
they should meet them...."

"On a gentle slope near the Fort stood a row of temporary huts
built by retainers to the troops; the green before these
buildings was the scene of these pathetic recognitions which I
did not fail to attend. The joy of the happy mothers was
overpowering and found vent in tears; but not the tears of those
who after long travel found not what they sought. It was
affecting to see the deep silent sorrow of the Indian women and
of the children, who knew no other mother, and clung fondly to
their bosems from whence they were not torn without bitter
shrieks. I shall never forget the grotesque figures and wild
looks of these young savages; nor the trembling haste with which
their mothers arrayed them in the new clothes they had brought
for them, as hoping with the Indian dress they would throw off
their habits and attachments...."[91]

Such distress caused by Indian raids did not, of course, cease with the
seventeenth century. During the entire period of the next century the
settlers on the western frontier lived under constant dread of such
calamities. It has been one of the chief elements in American
history--this ceaseless expectation of warfare with primitive savages.
In the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, in the
establishment of the great states of the Plains, in the founding of
civilization on the Pacific slope, even down to the twentieth century,
the price of progress has been paid in this form of savage torture of
women and children. Even in the long settled communities of the
eighteenth century such dangers did not entirely disappear. As late as
1782, when an attempt was made by Burgoyne to capture General Schuyler,
the ancient contest between mother and Indian warrior once more
occurred. "Their guns were stacked in the hall, the guards being
outside and the relief asleep. Lest the small Philip (grandson of
General Schuyler) be tempted to play with the guns, his mother had them
removed. The guards rushed for their guns, but they wer