An instance of the keenness of Indian ingenuity, in the invention of
original modes of torture, is given in Flint’s Indian Wars. The Indians
captured a young man of the name of Moses Hewitt, who lived on the
Little Hock hocking, and was a member of the Marietta settlement. He
was remarkable for the suppleness of his limbs, and the swiftness of
his running. The Indians tested him with their champion racers, and,
although he could not have run with much spirit, under his depressing
circumstances, he easily vanquished them all in swiftness. They
affected to be pleased, but their envy was piqued. They were destitute
of provisions, and wished to secure their swift-footed prisoner, while
they were occupied in their hunt. With this view, and probably to
torture him at the same time, they fastened his wrists by crossing
them, and binding them firmly with a cord. They then tied his arms
to a stake, so as partly to raise the upper part of his body. They
fastened his legs in the same way, and partly cut off a young sapling,
bending it down, so that the weight of the lower part of his body
would be a counterpoise to the elastic force of the curved tree. Thus
was he partially raised by his hands and feet, in a way most horribly
painful; and yet in a position where death would be slow in arriving
to his release. It was like the torture of killing by dropping water
on the head. Fortunately the young man had remarkably slender wrist
bones. When left alone to meditate upon his terrible situation, he
contrived, not without disengaging the skin and flesh from his wrists,
to disentangle his arms from their manacles, and finally his legs. He
picked up a little of the scraps of jerked meat, which the Indians had
left. To baffle their pursuit and that of their dogs, he ran on the
bodies of fallen trees, and meandered his course in every direction.
Such was the adroitness of his management, that he put them completely
at fault, escaped them, and came in to the settlement of Marietta,
wounded, his flesh torn and mangled, and emaciated to a skeleton—a
living proof how much man can survive before he suffers the mortal
pang. He had been absent fourteen days.
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