Monette, John W. History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, by the Three Great European Powers, Spain, France and Great Britain, and the Subsequent Occupation, Settlement, and Extension of Civil Government by the United States, Until the Year 1846, in two volumes, Volume II . New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1846. [format: book], [genre: history]. Permission: Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures, Aurora University
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the ordinary avocations of domestic life, and, taken by surprise, each defends himself and his friends with such means and weapons as are at hand, without any order or preconcerted arrangement. If the station falls under the attack, the inmates and defenders are mostly put to death with indiscriminate slaughter, the houses and defenses are destroyed by fire, when the victors, laden with the spoil, and assisted by such able-bodied prisoners as might be useful to carry off the plunder, depart speedily to their towns.

If the inmates of the station have fortunately received timely intelligence of their approach, the gates are closed, every point is manned, and the men, women, and children are assigned to their proper posts and duties, while the active defenders give their savage assailants a warm and warlike reception. The Indians, perceiving the danger of persisting in the attack, retire from the reach of the fire-arms of the fort, and conceal themselves in the neighboring forest. Each man being his own commissary, and having no supplies of provision, the host is compelled to spread out in search of game and other kinds of food, while a few chosen warriors alternately remain to keep up a strict ambuscade around the fort, lest any should escape and bear intelligence to other stations for assistance and re-enforcements, or lest any should get out at night to procure sustenance for their families. Thus for many days, and sometimes for many weeks, the siege is maintained by bands of Indians alternately relieving each other, while the whole region around, for twenty miles or more, is infested with lurking bands of warriors, whose whole operations are little better than the adventures of thieves and robbers. A successful attack, or a rich supply of plunder, would itself disperse the most formidable army of Indians; for the warriors, as soon as loaded with plunder, can not be restrained from returning to their towns. ^[27]

The horrors of Indian massacre none can describe: the scene of triumph and savage revelry over the mangled bodies of their victims, in a successful enterprise against large numbers, beggars description, and presents them more as fiends incarnate than as human beings. Scenes of this character were witnessed in the war of Pontiac in 1763, when the frontier

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