The anxiety felt by all regarding the safety of the still absent boat party was at length relieved by its appearance at a late hour. Their tale was soon told, confirming and amplifying the alarming details related by the fugitives who had so narrowly escaped with their own lives. On the morning following the events just narrated a party of volunteers made up of soldiers and civilians went up the river to Lee's place. There they found the bodies of Liberty White and the Frenchman Debou pierced with many wounds, the former having received the two shots heard by the fugitives, and the latter bearing the marks of numerous knife thrusts. The scalps of the murdered men had been taken by the Indians. The scalping process, which was practised by all the tribes of American Indians, has always added an element of horror to the outrages committed by them. The bodies of the murdered men were brought to the fort and buried in its immediate vicinity. The few inhabitants of the place living outside the fort, consisting of discharged soldiers and half-breeds, now took measures to defend themselves against a possible attack from the Indians, which they fully expected to follow. They planked up the long piazzas of the Agency House, which stood a short distance west of the fort on the bank of the river, and cut loopholes through the planks for use of musketry. Greater watchfulness was exercised by the garrison, and every preparation was made to resist attack. It was afterward learned through traders out in the Indian country that the perpetrators of this bloody deed were a band of Winnebago Indians who came into this neighborhood to "take some white scalps." Their plan had been to massacre all the men at the farm and then proceed down the river and kill every white man who could be found outside the walls of the fort. This plan they had partially carried out as we have seen, but hearing the sound of the cannon fired at the fort, which they knew would alarm all the whites of the neighborhood, and having no further hope of coming upon them by surprise, they thought it best to remain satisfied with what they had already accomplished, and hastily returned to their villages on Rock River. The tragedy at Lee's place was no doubt the result of the hostility awakened among the Indians of the western country by the malign influence of Tecumseh communicated through the various tribes of the Wabash Indians, among whom he was regarded as the champion of Indian rights. The battle of Tippecanoe, which had apparently crushed his power, was fought in the previous September; but he had renewed his activity from the safe shelter of the British dominions in Canada, where he had taken refuge, and as it was plain to all observers at this time that war between England and the United States was inevitable, the friendship of that chief was regarded as desirable by the former. Indeed, he and his tribesmen became an integral part of the British forces.