The boat once assailed and captured, the first action of the Indians was to butcher all the wounded.  If there was any rum or whiskey on board they drank it, feasted on the provisions, and took whatever goods they could carry off.  They then set off through the woods with their prisoners for distant Indian villages near the lakes.  They travelled fast, and mercilessly tomahawked the old people, the young children, and the women with child, as soon as their strength failed under the strain of the toil and hardship and terror.  When they had reached their villages they usually burned some of their captives and made slaves of the others, the women being treated as the concubines of their captors, and the children adopted by the families who wished them.  Of the captives a few might fall into the hands of friendly traders, or of the British officers at Detroit; a few might escape, or be ransomed by their kinsfolk, or be surrendered in consequence of some treaty.  The others succumbed to the perils of their new life, or gradually sank into a state of stolid savagery.

    Forays on the Settlements.

Naturally the ordinary Indian foray was directed against the settlements themselves; and of course the settlements of the frontier, as it continually shifted westward, were those which bore the brunt of the attack and served as a shield for the more thickly peopled and peaceful region behind.  Occasionally a big war party of a hundred warriors or over would come prepared for a stroke against some good-sized village or fort; but, as a rule, the Indians came in small bands, numbering from a couple to a dozen or score of individuals.  Entirely unencumbered by baggage or by impediments of any kind, such a band lurked through the woods, leaving no trail, camping wherever night happened to overtake it, and travelling whithersoever it wished.  The ravages committed by these skulking parties of murderous braves were monotonous in their horror.  All along the frontier the people on the outlying farms were ever in danger, and there was risk for the small hamlets and block-houses.  In their essentials the attacks were alike:  the stealthy approach, the sudden rush, with its accompaniment of yelling war-whoops, the butchery of men, women, and children, and the hasty flight with whatever prisoners were for the moment spared, before the armed neighbors could gather for rescue and revenge.

In most cases there was no record of the outrage; it was not put into any book; and, save among the survivors, all remembrance of it vanished as the logs of the forsaken cabin rotted and crumbled.

    Incidents of the War on the Frontier.

Yet tradition, or some chance written record kept alive the memory of some of these incidents, and a few such are worth reciting, if only to show what this warfare of savage and settler really was.  Most of the tales deal merely with some piece of unavenged butchery.