The next day he was given a blanket and moccasins, and allowed to march without being loaded with packs. A little bear's meat was furnished him, whose juice he was able to suck. At night the party reached Ticonderoga, where he was placed in charge of a French guard, and his sufferings came to an end. The savages manifested their chagrin at his escape by insulting grimaces and threatening gestures, but were not allowed to offer him any further indignity or violence. After an examination by the Marquis de Montcalm, who was in command at Ticonderoga, he was sent to Montreal, under charge of a French officer, who treated him in a humane manner.
Major Putnam was a frightful object on reaching Montreal, the little clothing allowed him being miserably dirty and ragged, his beard and hair dishevelled, his legs torn by thorns and briers, his face gashed, blood-stained, and swollen. Colonel Schuyler, a prisoner there, beheld his plight with deep commiseration, supplied him with clothing and money, and did his utmost to alleviate his condition.
When shortly afterwards an exchange of prisoners was being made, in which Colonel Schuyler was to be included, he, fearing that Putnam would be indefinitely held should his importance as a partisan leader become known, used a skilful artifice to obtain his release. Speaking to the governor with great politeness and seeming indifference of purpose, he remarked,—
"There is an old 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 vicious. Of their four sons, two, who were taken prisoner by the Indian at Braddock's defeat, developed into monsters of wickedness. James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe. Simon grew into a great hunter among the Senecas,—unfortunately a hunter of helpless human beings as much as of game,—and for twenty years his name was a terror in every white household of the Ohio country. He is spoken of as honest. It was his one virtue, the sole redeeming leaven in a life of vice, savagery, and cruelty.