Rev. W. M. Beauchamp in a paper recently read before The Oneida Historical Society, on “The Central New York Indians,” remarked that the Mohawks were hardly habitual cannibals, and yet they came very near it. They feasted on the bodies of braves, hoping to acquire their bravery.
Horatio Hale, in his “Book of Rites,” also confirms the statement that the Mohawks, though not regular cannibals, sometimes regaled themselves on human flesh. Mr. Hale adds that as these Indians became more and more a terror to the surrounding nations, the feelings of aversion and dread awakened by their habits found vent in an opprobrious epithet which the Algonquins applied. They were styled “Mowak,” a word which has been corrupted to Mohawk. It is an Algonquin word, meaning to eat, and applied to food that has had life. Literally it means those who eat men, or in other words, “the cannibals.”
Denonville in his journal makes mention of the cannibalistic propensities of the Mohawks in no very flattering terms. He describes them as opening dead bodies while still warm, and having cut them into quarters like butchers’ meat, placed the pieces in their kettles to boil.
Frontenac, in one of his characteristic documents to his rebellious children of Mi-chillimack-mac, asks, “Will you let the English brandy that has killed you in your wigwams lure you into the kettles of the Iroquois?”
This same renowned representative of Louis XIV., on one occasion even invoked a band of Ottawas to roast an Iroquois newly caught by his soldiers; but as they had hamstrung him to prevent his escape, he bled to death before he could be served up. The Ottawas had a strong craving for human food, and sometimes a tender-hearted Jesuit priest would be missing from his field of labor.
Lonvigny reverts to a spectacle which he witnessed where a number of this tribe fastened a prisoner to a stake and began to torture him; but as the poor wretch did not show sufficient courage, they refused to boil him.
The French missionary Brebeuf gives an account of the fate of certain prisoners captured by the Hurons. He states that when the victims showed courage, their hearts were taken out, cut into small pieces, roasted and given to the braves to increase their courage.
The Jesuit fathers, who labored in Canada in the early part of the seventeenth century, give the most explicit testimony to the existence of cannibal tribes in that dominion, and they admit in many cases they were eye-witnesses of their orgies.
Lagard, in his “Voyage des Hurons,” shows that among the Miamis there existed a religious tribe of man-eaters who devoured the hearts of their brave enemies, not from revenge or ferocity, but with the old idea that it inspired the eater with fortitude.
La Potherie observes that in one instance the Ottawas drank broth concocted from the remains of an Iroquois chief who fell into the hands of his enemies. The victim was made fast to a stake, and a Frenchman who was with the Indians gave him a sort of preliminary preparation for the pot by burning him with a red-hot gun barrel.