If the manner in which their friends had been killed was aggravating and greatly enraged them, they were very likely to decide upon torture, and inflicted it in a manner to produce the greatest suffering. But even in such cases they sometimes showed great magnanimity, and “returned good for evil.” Children were very often adopted, and by a solemn ceremony received into a particular tribe, and evermore treated as one of their own people. We have been in the habit of listening to heart-rending stories of cruelties to captives, but captives who were adopted were never cruelly treated. Those who were immediately put to death experienced great suffering for a few hours, and those who were preserved were subject to hardships which seemed to them unspeakable, but they were such as are necessarily incident to Indian life. They had no written chronicles to tell to all future generations the wrongs and tortures to which they were subjected, but one who sits with them by their firesides, may have his blood frozen with horror at recitals of civilized barbarity. And there is one species of wrong, of which no captive woman of any nation had to complain when she was thrown upon the tender mercies of Indian warriors. Not among all the dark and terrible records which their enemies have delighted to emblazon, is there a single instance of the outrage of that delicacy which a pure-minded woman cherishes at the expense of life, and sacrifices not to any species of mere animal suffering. Of what other nation can it be written, that their soldiers were not more terrible at the firesides of their enemies than on the battle field, with all the fierce engines of war at their command? To whatever motive it is to be ascribed, let this at least stand out on the pages of Indian history as an ever enduring monument to their honor. A little book, which professes to have been written for the sole purpose of recording and perpetuating Indian atrocities, and dwells upon them with infinite delight, alludes to this redeeming trait in Indian character, but attempts to ascribe it to the influence of superstition, as if it were necessary to find some evil or deteriorating motive for every thing noble or pleasing in Indian character. I have no doubt that it was quite revolting to the general sentiment in an Indian community, to mingle their blood with that of a nation whom they looked up on as a race of evil spirits let loose, and I wonder that they should ever have received them, as they often did, into their families, and to their bosom friendships and confidences. But this hatred in other nations prompts to the very manifestation of which an Indian was never guilty. Their treatment of captives from among Indian nations was the same, and I know not that there has been any satisfactory solution of a characteristic which has been found among only one other civilized, Christian or barbarous nation. A wanderer among the western tribes once asked an Indian why they thus