WENT HOME BEFORE THE EXERCISES WERE MORE THAN HALF THROUGH.
Some four or five thousand Indians joined the Confederates in this battle, but were so astonished at the cannon, and so shocked by the large decayed balls, as they called the shells, which came hurtling through the air, now and then hurting an Indian severely, that they went home before the exercises were more than half through. They were down on the programme for some fantastic and interesting tortures of Union prisoners, but when they got home to the reservation and had picked the briers out of themselves they said that war was about as barbarous a thing as they were ever to, and they went to bed early, leaving a call for 9.30 A.M. on the following day.
The red brother's style of warfare has an air about it that is unpopular now. A common stone stab-knife is a feeble thing to use against people who shoot a distance of eight miles with a gun that carries a forty-gallon caldron full of red-hot iron.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SOME MORE FRATRICIDAL STRIFE.
The effort to open the Mississippi from the north was seconded by an expedition from the south, in which Captain David G. Farragut, commanding a fleet of forty vessels, co-operated with General Benjamin F. Butler, with the capture of New Orleans as the object.
Mortar-boats covered with green branches for the purpose of fooling the enemy, as no one could tell at any distance at all whether these were or were not olive-branches, steamed up the river and bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip till the stunned catfish rose to the surface of the water to inquire, "Why all this?" and turned their pallid stomachs toward the soft Southern zenith. Sixteen thousand eight hundred shells were thrown into the two forts, but that did not capture New Orleans.
Farragut now decided to run his fleet past the defences, and, desperate as the chances were, he started on April 24. A big cable stretched across the river suggested the idea that there was a hostile feeling among the New Orleans people. Five rafts and armed steamers met him, and the iron-plated ram Manassas extended to him a cordial welcome to a wide wet grave with a southern exposure.
Farragut cut through the cable about three o'clock in the morning, practically destroyed the Confederate fleet, and steamed up to the city, which was at his mercy.