there are several instances of the commanders
exhorting the Indians to be merciful--which was a waste of breath,--and
several other instances where successful efforts were made to stop the
use of torture. The British officers were generally personally humane to
their prisoners.]; in other words, the savages were expressly directed
to make war on non-combatants, for it was impossible to attack a
settlement without attacking the women and children therein. In return
the frontiersmen speedily grew to regard both British and Indians with
the same venomous and indiscriminate anger.

Nature of the Ceaseless Strife

In the writings of the early annalists of these Indian wars are to be
found the records of countless deeds of individual valor and cowardice,
prowess and suffering, of terrible woe in time of disaster and defeat,
and of the glutting of ferocious vengeance in the days of triumphant
reprisal. They contain tales of the most heroic courage and of the
vilest poltroonery; for the iron times brought out all that was best and
all that was basest in the human breast. We read of husbands leaving
their wives, and women their children, to the most dreadful of fates, on
the chance that they themselves might thereby escape; and on the other
hand, we read again and again of the noblest acts of self-sacrifice,
where the man freely gave his life for that of his wife or child, his
brother or his friend. Many deeds of unflinching loyalty are recorded,
but very, very few where magnanimity was shown to a fallen foe. The
women shared the stern qualities of the men; often it happened that,
when the house-owner had been shot down, his wife made good the defence
of the cabin with rifle or with axe, hewing valiantly at the savages who
tried to break through the door, or dig under the puncheon floor, or,
perhaps, burst down through the roof or wide chimney. Many hundreds of
these tales could be gathered together; one or two are worth giving, not
as being unique, but rather as samples of innumerable others of the same
kind.

Feat of the Two Poes.

In those days [Footnote: 1781, De Haas; Doddridge, whom the other
compilers follow, gives a wrong date (1782), and reverses the parts the
two brothers played.] there lived beside the Ohio, in extreme
northwestern Virginia, two tall brothers, famed for their strength,
agility, and courage. They were named Adam and Andrew Poe. In the summer
of '81 a party of seven Wyandots or Hurons came