h this joyful sight. One of
the dreadful facts of the dreadful time was the frequent deception of
boatmen by Indians and renegades who pretended to be escaping prisoners,
and who lured them to their destruction by piteous appeals for help. The
boatmen now refused to land for Davis; they told him they had heard
too many stories like his, and they kept on down the stream, while he
followed wearily along the shore. At last he entreated them to row in
a little nearer, so that he could swim out to them. They consented to
this, and he plunged into the icy water, and was taken on board just as
his strength was spent.

In 1782, John Alder, then a child of eight years, was captured in Wythe
County, Virginia, by a party of Min-goes, who at the same time wounded
and killed his brother. They already had two prisoners, Mrs. Martin, the
wife of a neighbor, and her little one four or five years old: it proved
troublesome, on their rapid march across the Ohio country to their
village on Mad River, and they tomahawked and scalped it. The next
morning little Alder was somewhat slow in rising from his breakfast
when bidden, and on the ground he saw the shadow of an arm with a lifted
tomahawk. He glanced upward and found an Indian standing over him,
who presently began to feel of Alder's thick black hair. He afterwards
confessed that he had been about to kill him, but when he met his
pleasant smile he could not strike, and then he thought that a boy with
hair of that color would make a good Indian, and so spared him.

At the Mingo village Alder was made to run the gantlet between lines of
children armed with switches, but he was not much hurt, and he was now
taken into the tribe. He was given to a Mingo family, and the mother
washed him and dressed him in the Indian costume. They were kind to
him, but for a month he was very homesick, and used to go every day to a
large walnut tree near the town and cry for the friends and home he had
lost. After he had learned the Mingo language he began in time to be
more contented. He had no complaint to make of any of the family, except
one sister, who despised him as a prisoner, and treated him like a
slave. Another sister and her husband were his special friends, and he
relates that when he used to sit up with the Indians round their camp
fire, listening to their stories, he would sometimes drowse; then this
gentle sister and her husband would take him up in their arms and carry
him to bed, and he w