The intelligence concerning the fate of the traders in the Indian villages proved but too true. They were slaughtered everywhere, without mercy, and often under circumstances of the foulest barbarity. A boy named M’Cullough, captured during the French war, and at this time a prisoner among the Indians, relates, in his published narrative, that he, with a party of Indian children, went out, one evening, to gaze with awe and wonder at the body of a trader, which lay by the side of the path, mangled with tomahawks, and stuck full of arrows.[276] It was stated in the journals of the day, that more than a hundred traders fell victims, and that the property taken from them, or seized at the capture of the interior posts, amounted to an incredible sum.[277] The Moravian Loskiel relates that in the villages of the Hurons or Wyandots, meaning probably those of Sandusky, the traders were so numerous that the Indians were afraid to attack them openly, and had recourse to the following stratagem: They told their unsuspecting victims that the surrounding tribes had risen in arms, and were soon coming that way, bent on killing every Englishman they could find. The Wyandots averred that they would gladly protect their friends, the white men; but that it would be impossible to do so, unless the latter would consent, for the sake of appearances, to become their prisoners. In this case, they said, the hostile Indians would refrain from injuring them, and they should be set at liberty as soon as the danger was past. The traders fell into the snare. They gave up their arms, and, the better to carry out the deception, even consented to be bound; but no sooner was this accomplished, than their treacherous counsellors murdered them all in cold blood.[278]