When an attack is to be made, the war budget is opened, and each man takes out his budget, or totem, and attaches it to that part of his body which has been indicated by tradition from his ancestors.  When the attack is commenced, the body of the fighter is painted, generally black, and is almost naked.  After the action, each party returns his totem to the commander of the party, who carefully wraps them all up, and delivers them to the man who has taken the first prisoner or scalp; and he is entitled to the honor of leading the party home in triumph.  The war budget is then hung in front of the door of the person who carried it on the march against the enemy, where it remains suspended thirty or forty days, and some one of the party often sings and dances round it.

One mode of Indian burial seems to have prevailed, not only among the Indians of the lakes and of the Ohio valley, but over all the western country.  Some lay the dead body on the surface of the ground, make a crib or pen over it, and cover it with bark.  Others lay the body in a grave, covering it first with bark, and then with earth.  Others make a coffin out of the cloven section of trees, in the form of plank, and suspend it from the top of a tree.  Nothing can be more affecting than to see a young mother hanging the coffin that contains the remains of her beloved child to the pendent branches of the flowering maple, and singing her lament over her love and hope, as it waves in the breeze.

CHAPTER IX.

Boone becomes a favorite among the Indians—­Anecdotes relating to his captivity—­Their mode of tormenting and burning prisoners—­Their fortitude under the infliction of torture—­Concerted attack on Boonesborough—­Boone escapes.

Boone, being now a son in a principal Shawnee family, presents himself in a new light to our observation.  We would be glad to be able give a diurnal record of his modes of deportment, and getting along.  Unhappily, the records are few and meagre.  It will be obvious, that the necessity for a more profound dissimulation of contentment, cheerfulness, and a feeling of loving his home, was stronger than ever.  It was a semblance that must be daily and hourly sustained.  He would never have acquitted himself successfully, but for a wonderful versatility, which enabled him to enter into the spirit of whatever parts he was called upon to sustain; and a real love for the hunting and pursuits of the Indians, which rendered what was at first assumed, with a little practice, and the influence of habit, easy and natural.  He soon became in semblance so thoroughly one of them, and was able in all those points of practice which give them reputation, to conduct himself with so much skill and adroitness, that he gained the entire confidence of the family into which he was adopted, and become as dear to his mother of adoption as her own son.