This town was inhabited by the Shawnese, and Boone was placed in a most severe school, in which to learn Indian modes and ceremonies, by being himself the subject of them. On the return of the party that led him to their home, he learned that some superstitious scruple induced them to halt at mid-day when near their village, in order to solemnize their return by entering their town in the evening. A runner was despatched from their halting place to instruct the chief and the village touching the material incidents of their expedition.
Before the expedition made the triumphal entry into their village, they clad their white prisoner in a new dress, of material and fashion like theirs. They proceeded to shave his head and skewer his hair after their own fashion, and then rouged him with a plentiful smearing of vermilion and put into his hand a white staff, gorgeously tasselated with the tails of deer. The war-captain or leader of the expedition gave as many yells as they had taken prisoners and scalps. This operated as effectually as ringing a tocsin, to assemble the whole village round the camp. As soon as the warriors from the village appeared, four young warriors from the camp, the two first carrying each a calumet, approached the prisoner, chanting a song as they went, and taking him by the arm, led him in triumph to the cabin, where he was to remain until the announcement of his doom. The resident in this cabin, by their immemorial usage, had the power of determining his fate, whether to be tortured and burnt at the stake, or adopted into the tribe.
The present occupant of the cabin happened to be a woman, who had lost a son during the war. It is very probable that she was favorably impressed towards him by noting his fine person, and his firm and cheerful visage—circumstances which impress the women of the red people still more strongly than the men. She contemplated him stedfastly for some time, and sympathy and humanity triumphed, and she declared that she adopted him in place of the son she had lost. The two young men, who bore the calumet, instantly unpinioned his hands, treating him with kindness and respect. Food was brought him, and he was informed that he was considered as a son, and she, who had adopted him, as his mother. He was soon made aware, by demonstrations that could not be dissembled or mistaken, that he was actually loved, and trusted, as if he really were, what his adoption purported to make him. In a few days he suffered no other penalty of captivity than inability to return to his family. He was sufficiently instructed in Indian customs to know well, that any discovered purpose or attempt to escape would be punished with instant death.
Strange caprice of inscrutable instincts and results of habit! A circumstance, apparently fortuitous and accidental, placed him in the midst of an Indian family, the female owner of which loved him with the most disinterested tenderness, and lavished upon him all the affectionate sentiments of a mother towards a son. Had the die of his lot been cast otherwise, all the inhabitants of the village would have raised the death song, and each individual would have been as fiercely unfeeling to torment him, as they were now covetous to show him kindness. It is astonishing to see, in their habits of this sort, no interval between friendship and kindness, and the most ingenious and unrelenting barbarity. Placed between two posts, and his arms and feet extended between them, nearly in the form of a person suffering crucifixion, he would have been burnt to death at a slow fire, while men, women, and children would have danced about him, occasionally applying torches and burning splinters to die most exquisitely sensible parts of the frame, prolonging his torture, and exulting in it with the demoniac exhilaration of gratified revenge.
This was the most common fate of prisoners of war at that time. Sometimes they fastened the victim to a single stake, built a fire of green wood about him, and then raising their yell of exultation, marched off into the desert, leaving him to expire unheeded and alone. At other times they killed their prisoners by amputating their limbs joint by joint. Others they destroyed by pouring on them, from time to time, streams of scalding water. At other times they have been seen to hang their victim to a sapling tree by the hands, bending it down until the wretched sufferer has seen himself swinging up and down at the play of the breeze, his feet often, within a foot of the ground. In a word, they seem to have exhausted the invention and ingenuity of all time and all countries in the horrid art of inflicting torture.
The mention of a circumstance equally extraordinary in the Indian character, may be recorded here. If the sufferer in these afflictions be an Indian, during the whole of his agony a strange rivalry passes between them which shall outdo each other, they inflicting, and he in enduring these tortures. Not a groan, not a sigh, not a distortion of countenance is allowed to escape him. He smokes, and looks even cheerful. He occasionally chants a strain of his war song. He vaunts his exploits performed in afflicting death and desolation in their villages. He enumerates the names of their relatives and friends that he has slain. He menaces them with the terrible revenge that his friends will inflict by way of retaliation. He even derides their ignorance in the art of tormenting; assures them that he had afflicted much more ingenious torture upon their people; and indicates more excruciating modes of inflicting pain, and more sensitive parts of the frame to which to apply them.
They are exceedingly dexterous in the horrid surgical operation of taking off the scalp—that is, a considerable surface of the hairy integument of the crown of the cranium. Terrible as the operation is, there are not wanting great numbers of cases of persons who have survived, and recovered from it. The scalps of enemies thus taken, even when not paid for, as has been too often the infamous custom of their white auxiliaries, claiming to be civilized, are valued as badges of family honor, and trophies of the bravery of the warrior. On certain days and occasions, young warriors take a new name, constituting a new claim to honor, according to the number of scalps they have taken, or the bravery and exploits of those from whom they were taken. This name they deem a sufficient compensation for every fatigue and danger. Another ludicrous superstition tends to inspire them with the most heroic sentiments. They believe that all the fame, intelligence, and bravery that appertained to the enemy they have slain is transferred to them, and thenceforward becomes their intellectual property. Hence, they are excited with the most earnest appetite to kill warriors of distinguished fame. This article of Indian faith affords an apt illustration of the ordinary influence of envy, which seems to inspire the person whom it torments with the persuasion, that all the merit it can contract from the envied becomes its own, and that the laurels shorn from another's brow will sprout on its own.
He witnessed also their modes of hardening their children to that prodigious power of unshrinking endurance, of which such astonishing effects have just been recorded. This may be fitly termed the Indian system of gymnastics. The bodies of the children of both sexes are inured to hardships by compelling them to endure prolonged fastings, and to bathe in the coldest water. A child of eight years, fasts half a day; and one of twelve, a whole day without food or drink. The face is blacked during the fast, and is washed immediately before eating. The male face is entirely blacked; that of the female only on the cheeks. The course is discontinued in the case of the male at eighteen, and of the female at fourteen. At eighteen, the boy is instructed by his parents that his education is completed, and that he is old enough to be a man. His face is then blacked for the last time, and he is removed at the distance of some miles from the village, and placed in a temporary cabin. He is there addressed by his parent or guardian to this purport: "My son, it has pleased the Great Spirit that you should live to see this day. We all have noted your conduct since I first blacked your face. They well understand whether you have strictly followed the advice I have given you, and they will conduct themselves towards you according to their knowledge. You must remain here until I, or some of your friends, come for you."
The party then returns, resumes his gun, and seeming to forget the sufferer, goes to his hunting as usual, and the son or ward is left to endure hunger as long as it can be endured, and the party survive. The hunter, meanwhile, has procured the materials for a feast, of which the friends are invited to partake They accompany the father or guardian to the unfortunate starving subject. He then accompanies them home, and is bathed in cold water, and his head shaved after the Indian fashion—all but a small space on the centre of the crown. He is then allowed to take food, which, however, as a consecrated thing, is presented him in a vessel distinct from that used by the rest. After he has eaten, he is presented with a looking-glass, and a bag of vermilion. He is then complimented for the firmness with which he has sustained his fasting, and is told that he is henceforward a man, and to be considered as such. The instance is not known of a boy eating or drinking while under this interdict of the blacked face. They are deterred, not only by the strong sentiments of Indian honor, but by a persuasion that the Great Spirit would severely punish such disobedience of parental authority.
The most honorable mode of marriage, and that generally pursued by the more distinguished warriors, is to assemble the friends and relatives, and consult with them in regard to the person whom it is expedient to marry. The choice being made, the relations of the young man collect such presents as they deem proper for the occasion, go to the parents of the woman selected, make known the wishes of their friend, deposit their presents, and return without waiting for an answer. The relations of the girl assemble and consult on the subject. If they confirm the choice, they also collect presents, dress her in her best clothes, and take her to the friends of the bridegroom who made the application for the match, when it is understood that the marriage is completed. She herself has still a negative; and if she disapprove the match, the presents from the friends of the young man are returned, and this is considered as a refusal. Many of the more northern nations, as the Dacotas, for example, have a custom, that, when the husband deceases, his widow immediately manifests the deepest mourning, by putting off all her finery, and dresses herself in the coarsest Indian attire, the sackcloth of Indian lamentation. Meanwhile she makes up a respectable sized bundle of her clothes into the form of a kind of doll-man, which represents her husband. With this she sleeps. To this she converses and relates the sorrows of her desolate heart. It would be indecorous for any warrior, while she is in this predicament, to show her any attentions of gallantry. She never puts on any habiliments but those of sadness and disfigurement. The only comfort she is permitted in this desolate state is, that her budgetted husband is permitted, when drams are passing, to be considered as a living one, and she is allowed to cheer her depressed spirits with a double dram, that of her budget-husband and her own. After a full year of this penance with the budget-husband, she is allowed to exchange it for a living one, if she can find him.