| OF THE INDIAN MIND. 261
CRUELTY.
The American Indians, like all other savages,
were extremely cruel in the treatment of prison-
captured in war. They took great delight in
torturing them, and often burnt them alive.
Whether any palliation for these enormities can be
derived from. the fact that such inflictions produced
less exquisite pain in sufferers of their race than
they would have done in ours, we will not undertake
to say. At any rate, it is known that prison-
ers subjected to such treatment bore their tortures
with most astonishing fortitude. Sometimes, indeed,
such suffering was voluntarily incurred,
der the impulse of some exalted sentiment of
generosity, or other strong emotion.
THE FATHER DYING FOR HIS SON.
An account is given of an Indian who belonged
to a tribe that was involved in some quarrel with
neighboring tribe, and one day when he came
home from his hunting he found his wife in a state
extreme anguish and terror from the fact that a
party of the enemy had come suddenly upon the
wigwam during the absence of the father, and had
made a prisoner of the oldest son, and carried him
away.
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