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. [Illustration] OSCEOLA.