The savages scalped the dead, and took the heads as a trophy of victory, according to their custom. They returned with fifty wounded Montagnais and Algonquins and three dead, singing and leading their prisoners with them. They attached to sticks in the prows of their canoes the heads and a dead body cut into quarters, to eat in revenge, as they said. In this way, they went to our barques off the River of the Iroquois.
My companions and I embarked in a shallop, where I had my wound dressed by the surgeon, De Boyer, of Rouen, who likewise had come here for the purpose of traffic. The savages spent all this day in dancing and singing.
The next day, Sieur de Pont Gravé arrived with another shallop, loaded with merchandise. Moreover, there was also a barque containing Captain Pierre, which he had left behind, it being able to come only with difficulty, as it was rather heavy and a poor sailer.
The same day there was some trading in peltry, but the other barques carried off the better part of the booty. It was doing them a great favor to search out a strange people for them, that they might afterwards carry off the profit without any risk or danger.
That day, I asked the savages for an Iroquois prisoner which they had, and they gave him to me. What I did for him was not a little; for I saved him from many tortures which he must have suffered in company with his fellow-prisoners; whole nails they tore out, also cutting off their fingers, and burning them in several places. They put to death on the same day two or three, and, in order to increase their torture, treated them in the following manner.
They took the prisoners to the border of the water, and fastened them perfectly upright to a stake. Then each came with a torch of birch bark, and burned them, now in this place, now in that. The poor wretches, feeling the fire, raised so loud a cry that it was something frightful to hear; and frightful indeed are the cruelties which these barbarians practise towards each other. After making them suffer greatly in this manner and burning them with the above-mentioned bark, taking some water, they threw it on their bodies to increase their suffering. Then they applied the fire anew, so that the skin fell from their bodies, they continuing to utter loud cries and exclamations, and dancing until the poor wretches fell dead on the spot.
As soon as a body fell to the ground dead, they struck it violent blows with sticks, when they cut off the arms, legs, and other parts; and he was not regarded by them as manly, who did not cut off a piece of the flesh, and give it to the dogs. Such are the courtesies prisoners receive. But still they endure all the tortures inflicted upon them with such constancy that the spectator is astonished.
As to the other prisoners, which remained in possession of the Algonquins and Montagnais, it was left to their wives and daughters to put them to death with their own hands; and, in such a matter, they do not show themselves less inhuman than the men, but even surpass them by far in cruelty; for they devise by their cunning more cruel punishments, in which they take pleasure, putting an end to their lives by the most extreme pains.
The next day there arrived the Captain Yroquet, also another Ochateguin, with some eighty men, who regretted greatly not having been present at the defeat. Among all these tribes there were present nearly two hundred men, who had never before seen Christians, for whom they conceived a great admiration.
We were some three days together on an island off the river of the
Iroquois, when each tribe returned to its own country.