Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" of the North-West

by Mrs. John H. Kinzie

In an agony of uncertainty and terror, torn from their beloved home and parents, and anticipating all the horrors with which the rumors of the times had invested a captivity among the Indians—perhaps even a torturing death—the poor children could no longer restrain their grief, but gave vent to sobs and lamentations.

Their distress appeared to excite the compassion of one of the party, a man of mild aspect, who approached and endeavored to soothe them. He spread them a couch of the long grass which grew near the encamping place, offered them a portion of his own stock of dried meat and parched corn, and gave them to understand by signs that no further evil was intended them.

These kindly demonstrations were interrupted by the arrival of another party of the enemy, bringing with them the mother of the little prisoners with her youngest child, an infant of three months old.

It had so happened that the father of the family, with his serving-men, had gone early in the day to a raising at a few miles' distance, and the house had thus been left without a defender. The long period of tranquillity which they had enjoyed, free from all molestation or alarm from the savages, had quite thrown them off their guard, and they had recently laid aside some of the caution they had formerly found necessary.

These Indians, by lying in wait, had found the favorable moment for seizing the defenceless family and making them prisoners. Judging from their paint, and other marks by which the early settlers learned to distinguish the various tribes, Mrs. Lytle conjectured that those into whose hands she and her children had fallen were Senecas. Nor was she mistaken. It was a party of that tribe who had descended from their village with the intention of falling upon some isolated band of their enemies, the Delawares, but failing in this, had made themselves amends by capturing a few white settlers.

It is to be attributed to the generally mild disposition of this tribe, together with the magnanimous character of the chief who accompanied the party, that their prisoners in the present instance escaped the fate of most of the Americans who were so unhappy as to fall into the hands of the Iroquois.

The children learned from their mother that she was profoundly ignorant of the fate of their remaining brother and sister, a boy of six and a little girl of four years of age, but she was in hopes they had made good their escape with the servant girl, who had likewise disappeared from the commencement.

After remaining a few hours to recruit the exhausted frames of the prisoners, the savages again started on their march, one of the older Indians proffering to relieve the mother from the burden of her infant, which she had hitherto carried in her arms. Pleased with the unexpected kindness, she resigned to him her tender charge.

Thus they pursued their way, the savage who carried the infant lingering somewhat behind the rest of the party, until finding a spot convenient for his purpose, he grasped his innocent victim by the feet, and with one whirl, to add strength to the blow, dashed out its brains against a tree. Leaving the body upon the spot, he rejoined the party.