I raised my troubled eyes and glanced toward my Indians. They had stripped great squares of bark from half a dozen trees, and were busily painting upon them, in red and blue, insulting signs and symbols — a dead tree-cat, scalped, and full of arrows; a snake severed into sections; a Seneca tied to a post and a broken wampum belt at his feet. And on every tree they had also painted the symbol of their own clans and nation — pointed stones and the stars of the Pleiades; a witch-wolf and an enchanted bear; a yellow moth alighted on a white cross; a night-hawk, perfectly recognizable, soaring high above a sun, setting, bisecting the line of the horizon.

Every scalp taken was duly enumerated and painted there, together with every captured weapon. Such a gallery of art in the wilderness I had never before beheld.