The treatment of slaves depended upon the individual owner, whose disposition and mood might vary from kindliness to extreme cruelty according to circumstances or caprice, and, still more largely, upon custom. In the northwest slavery had existed for a sufficient length of time before the coming of the whites to modify materially the habits and institutions of the people. It doubtless produced the ideas of rank and caste so generally found among the Indians of that section, but so little known elsewhere among the American Indians.[80] Nevertheless the slaves among the Indians of the northwest were not, as a class, considered any more inferior to their owners than the slaves of the tribes farther east where adoption was more generally practiced. Consequently servitude in that section was of a rather mild type.[81] The same appears to have been true of servitude in general among the Indians. Slaves were probably not generally neglected or abused.[82] Yet there are many testimonials of cruel treatment. Travelers spoke of the slaves of the southern Indians serving and waiting on their masters with signs of the most abject fear, as tame, mild and tractable, without will or power to act but as directed by their masters.[83] The slave was expected to obey his master blindly and without disputing.[84] In this connection it must be understood that enslavement of captives in war was in itself a kindly act on the part of the captors, determined partly by the need of laborers and additional members in the tribe, partly by the use which the victors could make of these captives in traffic with other tribes and with the whites, and partly by mere whim. Otherwise, the prisoners were tortured and killed as an expression of hatred, or as a means of obtaining revenge for injury. To instil fear into them, slaves were often compelled to observe the torture of their fellow captives who were condemned to death. La Salle relates an instance in which slaves were forced to eat one of their own nation, a victim of such torture.[85] Among the Cenis such a custom was followed, and it is quite possible that this method of producing subjection was consistent with the habitual cruelty of most tribes. Precautions were taken to prevent the escape of slaves. The southern Indians were accustomed to mutilate the feet of their slaves either by cutting away a part of the foot, or by cutting the nerves and sinews just above the ankle or instep. The slave was thus prevented from running rapidly, and if he should escape, the tracks of his mutilated feet were easily recognizable.[86]