dure as much of physical torture as he himself inflicts. Lafitau writes: —
“This heroism is real, and is born of a grand and noble courage.
That which we admire in the martyrs of the primitive
Church, and which in them was the work of grace and miracle,
is nature in the savages, and comes from the vigor of their
spirit. The Indians seem to prepare themselves for this from
the most tender age. Their children have been observed to press
their naked arms against each other, and put burning cinders
between them, defying each other's fortitude in bearing the pain.
I myself saw a child of five or six years old, who, having been
severely burnt by some boiling water accidentally thrown upon it,
sang its death-song with the most extraordinary constancy every
time they dressed the sores, although suffering the most severe
pain.”[1]
To this is to be added the profound admiration, as for
a consummate virtue, which they have for a tortured
warrior whose nerves do not flinch under his agonies,
and who raises cheerily the pæan of his scornful
triumph. It does not appear that any one of the Jesuit
Fathers who have admiringly related, in all their horrifying
details, this more than Spartan firmness and defiance
of the savages under protracted tortures, had
suggested to himself the thought that the terrors of hell,
which he regarded as the most potent agency in the work
of conversion, might have at least but a qualified dread
for those who could thus triumph over agonies inflicted
by their fellow-men. All unconscious as the savages were
that such a doom awaited them, or that they had done
anything to expose themselves to it, the most sceptical
and philosophic among them may have resolved to meet
it if they must, and to find their comfort as some Christian
people, unawed by the terrific threat, have avowed
that they should do, in a stout confidence that the doom
was unjust.
- ↑ Mœurs des Sauvages, vol. ii. p. 280.
