influential people used all possible intreaties to save the prisoner from such a death, but in vain. He was given up to the Christian Indians of Loretto, and tormented in such a manner as none but a fiend could tolerate.[1] There was only one step beyond this, and that was for the French to enact the torturers themselves. That step was reached in 1695, at Machilimakinak Fort; and whoever has not strong nerves had better pass the following relation, which yet seems requisite to be given if we are to understand the full extent of the inflictions the American Indians have received from Europeans.
The successes of the Iroquois had driven the French to madness—and the prisoner was an Iroquois. "The prisoner being made fast to a stake, so as to have room to move round it, a Frenchman began the horrid tragedy by broiling the flesh of the prisoner's legs, from his toes to his knees, with the red-hot barrel of a gun. His example was followed by an Utawawa, and they relieved one another as they grew tired. The prisoner all this while continued his death-song, till they clapped a red-hot frying-pan on his buttocks, when he cried out 'Fire is strong, and too powerful.' Then all their Indians mocked him as wanting courage and resolution. 'You,' they said, 'a soldier and a captain, as you say, and afraid of fire:—you are not a man.' "
They continued their torments for two hours without ceasing. An Utawawa, being desirous to outdo the French in their refined cruelty, split a furrow from the prisoner's shoulder to his garter, and, filling it with gunpowder, set fire to it. This gave him exquisite
- ↑ Colden, i. 441.
