regiments; in the latter of which I served as a volunteer a considerable time; but finding no vacancy, and having no allowance for my services, to enable me to live and appear as I wished, I quitted the regiment to enjoy my favourite Indian life; and as I knew their manner of living, and could accommodate myself to their diet, I thought I might probably continue serviceable to my country in scouting parties, and accordingly accompanied a party of Savages to the Lake of the two Mountains, fifteen leagues above Montreal, a village belonging to the Connecedagas, carrying a scalp as a trophy of my services.[1]
Scalping is a mode of torture peculiar to the Indians.
If a blow is given with the tomahawk previous to the
scalp being taken off, it is followed by instant death; but
where scalping only is inflicted, it puts the person to
excruciating pain, though death does not always ensue.
There are instances of persons of both sexes, now living
in America, and no doubt in other countries, who, after
having been scalped, by wearing a plate of silver or tin
————
- ↑ The Lake of Two Mountains is an enlargement of the Ottawa River, near its mouth, above Montreal. On this lake is situated the Sulpitian mission town of Oka. This is a union of two early missions one, founded about 1677 on Montreal Island for Iroquois converts, weakened during the Iroquois War, and removed in 1704 to the Sault au Récollet, being finally located on the Lake of Two Mountains about 1720; the second, or Algonkin mission, was first called La Présentation and situated on Montreal Island near Lachine; the site was abandoned in 1685, and the remnants of the mission Indians gathered at Bout de l'Isle (the other end of the same island), where the mission was called St. Louis. Again removed (1706-07) to the Isle aux Tourtres, it was permanently located on the Lake of Two Mountains between 1721 and 1726. There are still about four hundred Indians located on the reserve at the lake. See Canadian Department of Indian Affairs Report, 1901, p. 49. The account given by Long in the following pages, of the Chippewa division of this mission, is the best known—their intermarriage with the Indians of the other mission villages at Caughnawaga and St. Regis, their cultivation of the soil, and their semi-civilized habits.—Ed.
