Note 6 — III

Page 56. So extreme and well founded was the prevalent terror of the torture by the Indians that once captured no immediate sacrifice was too great to evade the grimmer possibility. General David Stewart of Garth gives an instance in this region among the British troops at this time. “Montgomerie’s Highlanders were often employed in small detached expeditions. In these marches they had numberless skirmishes with the Indians and with the irregular troops of the enemy. Several soldiers of this and other regiments fell into the hands of the Indians, being taken in an ambush. Allan Macpherson, one of these soldiers, witnessing the miserable fate of several of his fellow prisoners, who had been tortured to death by the Indians, and seeing them preparing to commence the same operations upon himself, made signs that he had something to communicate. An interpreter was brought. Macpherson told them that provided his life was spared for a few minutes he would communicate the secret of an extraordinary medicine which, if applied to the skin, would cause it to resist the strongest blow of a tomahawk or sword, and if they would allow him to go to the woods with a guard to collect the plants proper for this medicine, he would prepare it and allow the experiment to be tried on his own neck by the strongest and most expert warrior among them. This story easily gained upon the superstitious credulity of the Indians, and the request of the Highlander was instantly complied with. Being sent into the woods he soon returned with such plants as he chose to pick up. Having boiled these herbs, he rubbed his neck with their juice, and laying his head upon a log of wood desired the strongest man among them to strike at his neck with his tomahawk, when he would find that he could not make the slightest impression. An Indian, leveling a blow with all his might, cut with such force that the head flew off to the distance of several yards. The Indians were fixed in amazement at their own credulity and the address with which the prisoner had escaped the lingering death prepared for him; but instead of being enraged at the escape of their victim, they were so pleased with his ingenuity that they refrained from inflicting further cruelties on their remaining prisoners.”