absent. We had passed the trading house but a short distance, when we met
three white men floating down the river, with the appearance of having
been recently murdered by the Indians, we supposed them to be the bodies
of the traders, whose store we had passed the same day. Sheninjee being
alarmed for fear of being apprehended as one of the murderers, if he
should go on, resolved to put about immediately, and we accordingly
returned to where the traders had lived, and there landed.

At the trading house we found a party of Shawnee Indians, who had taken a
young white man prisoner, and had just begun to torture him for the sole
purpose of gratifying their curiosity in exulting at his distress. They at
first made him stand up, while they slowly pared his ears and split them
into strings; they then made a number of slight incisions in his face; and
then bound him upon the ground, rolled him in the dirt, and rubbed it in
his wounds: some of them at the same time whipping him with small rods!
The poor fellow cried for mercy and yelled most piteously.

The sight of his distress seemed too much for me to endure: I begged of
them to desist--I entreated them with tears to release him. At length they
attended to my intercessions, and set him at liberty. He was shockingly
disfigured, bled profusely, and appeared to be in great pain: but as soon
as he was liberated he made off in haste, which was the last I saw of him.

We soon learned that the same party of Shawnees had, but a few hours
before, massacred the three white traders whom we saw in the river, and
had plundered their store. We, however, were not molested by them, and
after a short stay at that place, moved up the creek about forty miles to
a Shawnee town, which the Indians called Gaw-gush-shaw-ga, (which being
interpreted signifies a mask or a false face.) The creek that we went up
was called Candusky.