Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 3).djvu/59

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HUNTING-GROUND OF THE IROQUOIS
55

a knowing frontiersman and asked him if he could not capture an Indian in order to get some information concerning the enemy.

"Can you not capture one near Sandusky?" asked the general, as the man hesitated.

"No, not Sandusky," was the ready reply.

"And why not at Sandusky?"

"There are only Wyandots at Sandusky."

"Well, why will not a Wyandot do?" insisted the irrepressible Wayne.

"Because, Sir," replied the woodsman, "a Wyandot is never captured alive."

The story is typical of the Wyandots throughout all their history for a century—for it lacked but five years of a century when they signed the treaty at Greenville after General Wayne's campaign. Allied, in the beginning, as we have seen, to the French, the Wyandots fought sturdily for their cause until New France was abandoned. Under Pontiac they joined in the plot to drive out the English from the West and win back the land for France. In turn they became attached to the British interests at the breaking out of the Revolu-