Yet it is recorded of this chief, that he always carried about with him two scalps in a buckskin pouch, "taken from the heads of soldiers in the war of 1812, and when under the influence of liquor he would exhibit them, going through the motions of obtaining those trophies." Schoolcraft, whose attention was especially drawn towards this chieftain on account of his drunken ferocity, and who paints him as one of the worst of many bad savages of his day, says: "He often freely indulged in liquor; and when excited, exhibited the flushed visage of a demon. On one occasion, two of his wives, or rather female slaves, had a dispute. One of them went, in her excited state of feeling, to Wabunsee, and told him that the other ill-treated his children. He ordered the accused to come before him. He told her to lie down on her back on the ground. He then directed the other (her accuser) to take a tomahawk and dispatch her. She instantly split open her skull. "There," said the savage, "let the crows eat her." He left her unburied, but was afterwards persuaded to direct the murderess to bury her. She dug the grave so shallow, that the wolves pulled out her body that night, and partly devoured it." The cold, cruel treachery of this tribe is without a parallel, save in the single instance of the Shawnees. It has been admitted by Shaubena, one of their best chiefs, that most of the depredations on the frontier settlements in Illinois during the Black Hawk war, were committed by the Potawatomi. The cowardly and brutal massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, was the work principally of the Potawatomi, "and their several bands from the Illinois and Kankakee rivers; those from the St. Joseph of the lake, and the St. Joseph of the Maumee, and those of the Wabash and its tributaries were all represented in the despicable act." In that massacre, Captain William Wells, the brother-in-law of Little Turtle, was killed when he was trying to protect the soldiers and refugees. He was discovered afterwards, terribly mutilated. His body lay in one place, his head in another, while his arms and legs were scattered about over the prairie. The warriors of this tribe, stripped to the skin, except breech-cloth and moccasins, and with bodies painted with red stripes, went into battle with the rage of mad-men and demons and committed every excess known to human cruelty.