Having arrived within a mile of Chillicothe, they halted, took Butler from his horse, and tied him to a stake, where he remained twenty-four hours in one position. He was taken from the stake to ‘run the gauntlet.’ The Indian mode of managing this kind of torture was as follows: The inhabitants of the tribe, old and young, were placed in parallel lines, armed with clubs and switches. The victim was to make his way to the council house, through these files, every member of which struggled to beat him, as he passed, as severely as possible. If he reached the council house alive, he was to be spared. In the lines were nearly six hundred Indians, and Butler had to make his way almost a mile in the endurance of this infernal sport. He was started by a blow; but soon broke through the files, and had almost reached the council house, when a stout warrior knocked him down with a club. He was severely beaten in this position, and taken back again into custody.
It seems incredible, that they sometimes rescued their prisoners from these tortures, adopted them, and treated them with the utmost lenity and even kindness. At other times, ingenuity was exhausted to invent tortures, and every renewed endurance of the victim seemed to stimulate their vengeance to new discoveries of cruelty. Butler was one of these ill-fated subjects. No way satisfied with what they had done, they marched him from village to village, to give all a spectacle of his sufferings. He ran the gauntlet thirteen times. He made various attempts to escape; and in one instance would have effected it, had he not been arrested by some savages who were accidentally returning to the village from which he was escaping. It was finally determined to burn him at the lower Sandusky, but an apparent accident changed his destiny.
In passing to the stake, the procession went by the cabin of Simon Girty, who had just returned from an unsuccessful expedition to the frontiers of Pennsylvania. The wretch burned with disappointment and revenge; and hearing that there was a white man going to the torture, determined to wreak his vengeance on him. He found the unfortunate Butler, threw him to the ground, and began to beat him. Butler, who instantly recognized in Girty a former companion of his youth, made himself known to him. His savage heart relented. He raised him up, and promised to use his influence to save him. Girty had a council called, and he moved the savages to give Butler up to him. He took the unfortunate man home, fed, and clothed him, and Butler began to recruit from his wounds and torture. But the relenting of the savages in his favour was only momentary. After five days, they repented of their relaxation in his favour, reclaimed him, and marched him to Lower Sandusky to be burned, according to their original purpose. By a surprising coincidence, he there met the Indian agent from Detroit, who from motives of humanity, exerted his influence with the savages for his release, and took him with him to Detroit. Here he was paroled by the governor. He escaped, and by a march of thirty days through the wilderness, reached Kentucky.
INGENUITY IN TORTURE.
An instance of the keenness of Indian ingenuity, in the invention of original modes of torture, is given in Flint’s Indian Wars. The Indians captured a young man of the name of Moses Hewitt, who lived on the Little Hock hocking, and was a member of the Marietta settlement. He was remarkable for the suppleness of his limbs, and the swiftness of his running. The Indians tested him with their champion racers, and, although he could not have run with much spirit, under his depressing circumstances, he easily vanquished them all in swiftness. They affected to be pleased, but their envy was piqued. They were destitute of provisions, and wished to secure their swift-footed prisoner, while they were occupied in their hunt. With this view, and probably to torture him at the same time, they fastened his wrists by crossing them, and binding them firmly with a cord. They then tied his arms to a stake, so as partly to raise the upper part of his body. They fastened his legs in the same way, and partly cut off a young sapling, bending it down, so that the weight of the lower part of his body would be a counterpoise to the elastic force of the curved tree. Thus was he partially raised by his hands and feet, in a way most horribly painful; and yet in a position where death would be slow in arriving to his release. It was like the torture of killing by dropping water on the head. Fortunately the young man had remarkably slender wrist bones. When left alone to meditate upon his terrible situation, he contrived, not without disengaging the skin and flesh from his wrists, to disentangle his arms from their manacles, and finally his legs. He picked up a little of the scraps of jerked meat, which the Indians had left. To baffle their pursuit and that of their dogs, he ran on the bodies of fallen trees, and meandered his course in every direction. Such was the adroitness of his management, that he put them completely at fault, escaped them, and came in to the settlement of Marietta, wounded, his flesh torn and mangled, and emaciated to a skeleton—a living proof how much man can survive before he suffers the mortal pang. He had been absent fourteen days.
