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Not a shot was fired, nor was there any further resistance offered on the part of the Indians; but as they turned to leave the humiliated chief pointed to the sun and made a circle around his head as if to indicate a threat of scalping. It was in interpreting this latter sign that the dispute arose between two of the outfit.
It angered the Americans that hired troops should be used against them, an anger not lessened by the contempt which the Hessians showed for the colonial officers as plebeians. The two sides were much alike in their qualities and were skillful in propaganda. In Britain lurid tales were told of the colonists scalping the wounded at Lexington and using poisoned bullets at Bunker Hill.
Rube was left lying on a blanket while Kiddie, re-mounting the piebald, rode back to the battlefield to put a stop to all scalping and mutilating and looting, to attend to the wounded, and to draw off the Crows as Broken Feather had drawn off the Sioux.
"Because he thinks he will get profit out of it, whatever the event. If our army is defeated, he may have a great scalping, such as there was at Fort William Henry; if the French are beaten, it will be easy enough for him to get away in time. But as long as the issue hangs in the balance, Tandakora means to be present."
"If we had been that you'd be a dead man already," said Shif'less Sol. It was a grim reply, but it was unanswerable, and Standish recognized the fact. His wife had felt the truth in the tones of the strangers, and was begging him to go. Their children were crying at visions of the tomahawk and scalping knife now so near. "We'll go," said Standish. "At any rate, it can't do any harm.
This proposition Clark instantly rejected, and the firing again began, the backwoodsmen beseeching Clark to let them storm the fort; he refused. While the negotiations were going on a singular incident occurred. A party of Hamilton's Indians returned from a successful scalping expedition against the frontier, and being ignorant of what had taken place, marched straight into the town.
The savages arose, and one of them said: "Fellow warriors, the mighty chief Fale-in-his-Hoce I mean Hole-in-his-Face has arrived." Then a wild yell of greeting went up to the twinkling stars, and every savage brandished a tomahawk, scalping knife, or some other kind of weapon.
Occasionally one of them would pull a hair from his head, seize his scalping-knife; and cut the hair with it a most unpleasant sight! When either of my sisters approached them some of the Indians would make gestures, as if capturing and scalping her.
The Indians placed him on the grass to die, where the backwoodsman who told me the story, saw him after the lapse of two hours, and life was not then extinct, with such tenacity does it cling to the body of an Indian. The scalping knife was at length passed across his throat, and thus ended the scene.
Their scalping- knives and stakes added a fearful horror to many of the battles. On both sides the military policy seemed simple. The English must attack, the French must do their best to defend. The French were vulnerable in Nova Scotia and on the Ohio; their centre also was pierced by two highways leading from the Hudson, one through Lake Champlain, the other through the Mohawk and Lake Ontario.
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