of fallen logs.  The soldiers also halted, and were speedily swept away by the fire of the Indians, whom they could not reach; but Van Cleve, showing his skill as a woodsman, covered himself behind a small tree, and gave back shot for shot until all his ammunition was gone.  Before this happened his less skilful companions had been slain or driven off, and he ran at full speed back to camp.  Here he found that the artillery had been taken and re-taken again and again.  Stricken men lay in heaps everywhere, and the charging troops were once more driving the Indians across the creek in front of the camp.  Van Cleve noticed that the dead officers and soldiers who were lying about the guns had all been scalped and that “the Indians had not been in a hurry, for their hair was all skinned off.”  Another of the packers who took part in the fight, one Thomas Irwin, was struck with the spectacle offered by the slaughtered artillerymen, and with grewsome homeliness compared the reeking heads to pumpkins in a December cornfield.

  The Soldiers Lose Heart. 
  Panic Seizes the Army.

As the officers fell the soldiers, who at first stood up bravely enough, gradually grew disheartened.  No words can paint the hopelessness and horror such a struggle as that in which they were engaged.  They were hemmed in by foes who showed no mercy and whose blows they could in no way return.  If they charged they could not overtake the Indians; and the instant the charge stopped the Indians came back.  If they stood they were shot down by an unseen enemy; and there was no stronghold, no refuge to which to flee.  The Indian attack was relentless, and could neither be avoided, parried, nor met by counter assault.  For two hours or so the troops kept up a slowly lessening resistance; but by degrees their hearts failed.  The wounded had been brought towards the middle of the lines, where the baggage and tents were, and an ever growing proportion of unwounded men joined them.  In vain the officers tried, by encouragement, by jeers, by blows, to drive them back to the fight.  They were unnerved.  As in all cases where large bodies of men are put in imminent peril of death, whether by shipwreck, plague, fire, or violence, numbers were swayed by a mad panic of utterly selfish fear, and others became numbed and callous, or snatched at any animal gratification during their last moments.  Many soldiers crowded round the fires and stood stunned and confounded by the awful calamity; many broke into the officers’ marquees and sought for drink, or devoured the food which the rightful owners had left when the drums beat to arms.

    St. Clair Resolves on Retreat.