respect for true courage, that if the fire had not already spoiled him, he should be spared.  That being now impossible, he promised him the merciful release of the tomahawk.  He then held the terrible instrument suspended some moments over his head, during all which time he was seen neither to change his posture, move a muscle, or his countenance to blench.  The tomahawk fell, and the impassable warrior ceased to suffer.

[Illustration]

We shall close these details of the Shawnese customs, at the time when Boone was prisoner among them, by giving his account of their ceremonies at making peace.  The chief warriors, who arrange the conditions of the peace and subsequent friendship, first mutually eat and smoke together.  They then pledge each other in the sacred drink called Cussena.  The Shawnese then wave large fans of eagles’ tails, and conclude with a dance.  The stranger warriors, who have come to receive the peace, select half a dozen of their most active young men, surmounting their crowns with swan’s feathers, and painting their bodies with white clay.  They then place their file leader on the consecrated seat of what imports in their language, the “beloved cabin.”  Afterwards they commence singing the peace song, with an air of great solemnity.  They begin to dance, first in a prone or bowing posture.  They then raise themselves erect, look upwards, and wave their eagles’ tails towards the sky, first with a slow, and then with a quick and jerky motion.  At the same time, they strike their breast with a calabash fastened to a stick about a foot in length, which they hold in their left hand, while they wave the eagles’ feathers with the right, and keep time by rattling pebbles in a gourd.  These ceremonies of peace-making they consider among their most solemn duties; and to be perfectly accomplished in all the notes and gestures is an indispensable acquirement to a thorough trained warrior.

Boone has related, at different times, many oral details of his private and domestic life, and his modes of getting along in the family, of which he was considered a member.  He was perfectly trained to their ways, could prepare their food, and perform any of their common domestic operations with the best of them.  He often accompanied them in their hunting excursions, wandering with them over the extent of forest between Chillicothe and lake Erie.  These conversations presented curious and most vivid pictures of their interior modes; their tasks of diurnal labor and supply; their long and severe fasts; their gluttonous indulgence, when they had food; and their reckless generosity and hospitality, when they had any thing to bestow to travelling visitants.

To become, during this tedious captivity, perfectly acquainted with their most interior domestic and diurnal manners, was not without interest for a mind constituted like his.  To make himself master of their language, and to become familiarly acquainted with their customs, he considered acquisitions of the highest utility in the future operations, in which, notwithstanding his present duress, he hoped yet to be beneficial to his beloved settlement of Kentucky.