these children of the forest broke and ran.

Brave

as they are in fight, the Indian cannot face the roar and wrack of serious war. They made a rush; but, met with volleys, they recoiled. All sounds and sights were new to them. Hardly one Indian in ten had heard a cannon fired. Not one Indian in fifty had seen a rocket. Shells appeared to them shooting-stars. Their whoop could not be heard for noise; their foes could not be seen for smoke. Even when they dodged behind oaks and pines they were not safe. Shells burst among the trees, and splinters crashed about their heads. What could these children of the forest do but crouch on the ground, cover their bodies with sand and stones, and wait until the night came down?

At dusk they stole into the field, and passing through the sleeping soldiers, scalped the dying and the dead, and carried off their trophies to the camp. These were the only blows the Indians ever struck for the possession of their Negro slaves.

Next day the scalpless men were found by burying-parties, and a cry rose up from both American camps against employment of such savages. Curtis sent a message to Van Dorn, and to avoid

retaliation, the Confederate General was obliged to order his Red contingent to go home.

Pike lost his lace and feathers, and his Creek and Cherokee warriors had to stand aside, solaced by whisky, till the White men who were quarrelling among themselves over Black rights and wrongs, had settled under the walls of Richmond whether a Redskin living on the Arkansas should, or should not, continue to hold his Black brother in a state of servitude.

When Richmond fell the slaves in fifty Indian. camps were free.

293

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN CADDO.

THE Negro slaves were free; but free in a separate Indian country, in the midst of savage Indian camps!

In President Lincoln's proclamation not a word was said about the ten thousand Negroes who were then living as slaves on Indian soil. This country lies beyond the Pale. Only ten months after the battle of Pea Ridge the proclamation of freedom came out, but the heat and burthen of the strife had been so great on other fields, that people had forgotten how the war-whoop and the scalping-knife had been employed on Pea Ridge. In fact, the Red man's slaves were overlooked.

Alone with their late owners, and beyond the reach of help from Washington, what were the liberated slaves to do? In theory they were free; in substance they were only free to starve. They had no tents, no guns, no ponies. Not an acre of

the land belonged to place within the tribe. on the Potomac, these their condition on the Arkansas and Red River. They are a feeble folk, these coloured people; and their masters, though unwilling to face small bodies of White men, are ready to fight any number of Blacks. When news arrived at Fort Gibson and Fort Scott that the war was over and the Negroes emancipated, the Cherokee and Choctaw masters yielded with a sullen fury to their loss. They kicked the liberated Negroes from their camp.

them, nor had they now a While they were overlooked Negroes found no change in

Beyond the reach of help from Boston and New York, even if Boston and New York had means of helping them, how were the Blacks to live? In theory they were now free; but having neither tents nor lodges, where could they find a shelter from the snow and rain? Without guns and ponies, how were they to follow deer and elk? They had no nets for taking fish, no snares for catching birds. Having no place in any Indian tribe, they had no right to stay on any of the tribal lands. Nor were they dowered with the invention and resources of

men accustomed to the fight for life. Brought up with squaws, they had the ways of squaws. Set to dig roots, to cut wood, to pitch and pack tents, to dry and cure skins, they might dawdle through the day, sulking at their toil and muttering oaths below their breath. But with the task imposed on them they stopped. From labour of a larger kind, and from adventure with a dash of peril, they recoiled in laziness and fright. A Negro seldom rode a horse. Not many Negroes knew the use of firearms. Slaves were never trained by Indians to the chase; for hunting was the trade of freeborn braves, the pastime of warriors, seers and chiefs. A Negro rarely marched with the young braves, and never learnt to lie in wait for scalps. In Creek and Seminole creeds, a Negro was a squaw, and not a brave.

A life of servitude unfits a man for independent arts. Helpless as a pony or a papoose, the Negro was now cut adrift. While he remained a slave he had a place in tent and tribe, as part of a chief's family; having ceased to be a slave, he lost his right of counting in the lodge, and sank into the grade of outcast. He belonged to no one. As an