color.  Tradition relates that on the eve of his departure he made his purpose known to Little Turtle, and added, “We have long been friends; we are friends yet, until the sun stands so high [indicating the place] in the heavens; from that time we are enemies and may kill one another.”  Be this as it may, he came to Wayne, was taken into high favor, and made chief of scouts, and served loyally and with signal success until the end of the campaign.  After the campaign he was joined by his Indian wife and his children; the latter grew up and married well in the community, so that their blood now flows in the veins of many of the descendants of the old pioneers.  Wells himself was slain by the Indians long afterwards, in 1812, at the Chicago massacre.

    Surprise of an Indian Party.

One of Wells’ fellow spies was William Miller.  Miller, like Wells, had been captured by the Indians when a boy, together with his brother Christopher.  When he grew to manhood he longed to rejoin his own people, and finally did so, but he could not persuade his brother to come with him, for Christopher had become an Indian at heart.  In June, 1794, Wells, Miller, and a third spy, Robert McClellan, were sent out by Wayne with special instructions to bring in a live Indian.  McClellan, who a number of years afterwards became a famous plainsman and Rocky Mountain man, was remarkably swift of foot.  Near the Glaize River they found three Indians roasting venison by a fire, on a high open piece of ground, clear of brushwood.  By taking advantage of the cover yielded by a fallen treetop the three scouts crawled within seventy yards of the camp fire; and Wells and Miller agreed to fire at the two outermost Indians, while McClellan, as soon as they had fired, was to dash in and run down the third.  As the rifles cracked the two doomed warriors fell dead in their tracks; while McClellan bounded forward at full speed, tomahawk in hand.  The Indian had no time to pick up his gun; fleeing for his life he reached the bank of the river, where the bluffs were twenty feet high, and sprang over into the stream-bed.  He struck a miry place, and while he was floundering McClellan came to the top of the bluff and instantly sprang down full on him, and overpowered him.  The others came up and secured the prisoner, whom they found to be a white man; and to Miller’s astonishment it proved to be his brother Christopher.  The scouts brought their prisoner, and the scalps of the two slain warriors, back to Wayne.  At first Christopher was sulky and refused to join the whites; so at Greeneville he was put in the guard house.  After a few days he grew more cheerful, and said he had changed his mind.  Wayne set him at liberty, and he not only served valiantly as a scout through the campaign, but acted as Wayne’s interpreter.  Early in July he showed his good faith by assisting McClellan in the capture of a Pottawatamie chief.

    An Unexpected Act of Mercy.