evil."

Children were often adopted, and by a solemn ceremony received into a
particular tribe, and evermore treated as one of their own people. You
have been in the habit of listening to heart-rending stories of cruelties
to captives, but captives who were adopted were never cruelly treated.
Those who were immediately put to death experienced great suffering for a
few hours, and those who were preserved were subjected to hardships which
seemed to them unspeakable, but they were such as are necessarily
incident to Indian life. They left no written chronicles to tell to all
future generations the wrongs and tortures to which they were subjected,
but one who sits with them by their firesides, may have his blood frozen
with horror at the recitals of civilized barbarity.

And there was one species of wrong of which no captive woman of any
nation had to complain when she was thrown upon the tender mercies of
Indian warriors. Not among all the dark and terrible records which their
enemies have delighted to magnify, is there a single instance of the
outrage of that delicacy which a pure minded woman cherishes at the
expense of life, and sacrifices not to any species of mere animal
suffering. Of what other nation can it thus be written, that their
soldiers were not more terrible at the firesides of their enemies than on
the battle-field, with all the fierce engines of war at their command. To
whatever motive it is to be ascribed, let this at least stand out on the
pages of Indian history as an ever enduring monument to their honor.

A little book which professes to have been written for the sole purpose
of recording and perpetuating Indian atrocities, and dwells upon them
with infinite delight, alludes to this redeeming trait in Indian
character, but attempts to ascribe it to the influence of superstition,