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.
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