Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
PRE- AND EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE
This place, where this charge was made, is in latitude 43 degrees and some
minutes, and I named the lake Lake Champlain.
Chapter X
Return from the battle, and what happened on the way.
After going eight leagues, toward evening they took one of the prisoners and
harangued him about the cruelties that he and his people had inicted on them,
without having any consideration for them; and said that similarly he ought to
make up his mind to receive as much. They commanded him to sing, if he had any
courage; which he did, but it was a song very sad to hear.
Meanwhile our men lighted a re, and when it was blazing well, each one took
a brand and burned this poor wretch little by little, to make him suer greater
torment. Sometimes they stopped and threw water on his back. Then they tore
out his nails and put the re on the ends of his ngers and on his privy member.
Afterward they ayed the top of his head and dripped on top of it a kind of gum all
hot; then they pierced his arms near the wrists, and with sticks pulled the sinews,
and tore them out by force; and when they saw that they could not get them, they
cut them. This poor wretch uttered strange cries, and I pitied him when I saw him
treated in this way; and yet he showed such endurance that one would have said
that, at times, he did not feel any pain.
They strongly urged me to take some re and do as they were doing, but I
explained to them that we did not use such cruelties at all, and that we killed them
at once, and that if they wished me to re a musket shot at him I would do it
gladly. They said “no,” and that he would not feel any pain. I went away from them,
distressed to see so much cruelty as they were practising upon this body. When
they saw that I was not pleased at it, they called me and told me to re a musket
shot at him; which I did without his seeing it at all. After he was dead they were not
satised, for they opened his belly and threw his entrails into the lake; then they
cut o his head, his arms, and his legs, which they scattered in dierent directions,
and kept the scalp, which they had skinned o, as they had done with all the others
that they had killed in the battle.
They committed also another wickedness, which was to take the heart,
which they cut into several pieces and gave to a brother of his and others of his
companions, who were prisoners, to eat. They put it into their mouths, but would
not swallow it. Some Algonquin savages, who were guarding them, made some of
them spit it out and threw it into the water. This is how these people treat those
whom they capture in war; and it would be better for them to die in ghting, or to
kill themselves on the spur of the moment, as there are many who do, rather than
fall into the hands of their enemies. After this execution we resumed our march
to return with the rest of the prisoners, who always went along singing, without
any hope of being better treated than the other. When we arrived at the rapids of
the River of the Iroquois, the Algonquins returned to their country, and also the
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