defensive measures of alliance with the Algonquins and Hurons, against their ancient enemy the Iroquois, or Five Confederated Nations. "Monsieur de Champlain," says La Potherie, "wishing to evince to his Indian allies the esteem he felt for them, and to give them proofs of the bravery of the French, placed himself at their head, and entering the river of the Iroquois, advanced as far as the lake which now bears his name." In this unjust aggression, he made a first experiment of the effect of fire arms upon a people totally ignorant of the use of them. The first shot that was fired, from a French arquebuss loaded with four balls, and pointed by Champlain himself, killed three of the Iroquois chiefs, who had advanced in front of their fellow-warriors, and whose plumes of feathers had enabled him to distinguish and mark them out for destruction.* Their followers, struck with consternation at the effect of those unknown engines, were speedily routed but the death of their leaders was amply revenged by the Iroquois. This, and similar expeditions carried on by Champlain, cost France a hundred and fifty years of Indian warfare.

Champlain had not long to wait until he witnessed the Indian treatment of prisoners taken in war a treatment to which numbers of his own

*Voyages dans la Nouvelle France par le Sieur de Champlain, liv. ii, ch. 10. Paris, 1613.)

countrymen were afterwards subjected in New France. Upon this his first victory, his Indian confederates selected an Iroquois captive, on whom, in their accustomed manner, they inflicted the most savage cruelties. The French were struck with horror at the sight; and prevailed upon the Indians, though with considerable difficulty, to allow their tortured prisoner to be put to death at an earlier stage of his torments than would otherwise have been permitted. They at first refused this request, but seeing that Champlain was extremely displeased with them, they told him, he might shoot their prisoner if he chose. Champlain accordingly levelled his arquebuss at the captive, and put an end to his misery. To such spectacles, however, the French soon became accustomed; and, in the course of the numerous and bloody campaigns which succeeded each other, year after year, the Iroquois on the one hand, and the French with their Indian allies on the other, perpetrated in every quarter the most barbarous excesses.

The barbarities committed upon the Indians in Canada were particularly conspicuous during the long administration of the Count de Frontenac. The experience and zeal of that officer had induced the French government, after having recalled him to Europe, again to require his services in North America; but however zealous the count appears to have been in promoting the views of his royal

master--whether these views were directed towards the increase of the temporal power of the crown, the extension of the Roman Catholic religion, or the promotion of the Canadian fur-trade-there can be little doubt that the means he resorted to for accomplishing his object, were not very consistent with the so much boasted humanity of the French towards the North American savages. Dr. Colden, in his History of the Five Nations, has given various instances in proof of this assertion. Among these it appears that, upon one occasion, when the governor sent an officer with a hundred men to convoy some of their Ottowa allies back to their own country, he presented them, on their departure, with two Iroquois captives, for the purpose of convincing their nation of the success of the French against the Iroquois. These prisoners, as might have been expected, were afterwards burnt alive by the Ottowas. The Iroquois, however, continued to retaliate with great fury, and the injuries inflicted upon them by the French and their Indian confederates were never allowed long to pass with impunity. The war parties of the Five Nations, under their celebrated chief Black Kettle, made constant inroads upon the Canadian settlements, to the very suburbs of Montreal, leaving their traces every where marked with devastation and bloodshed.

"The Count de Frontenac," says Colden, "was

pierced to the heart, when he found that he could not revenge these terrible incursions of the Five Nations; and his anguish made him guilty of such a piece of monstrous cruelty, in burning a prisoner alive after the Indian manner, as though I have frequently mentioned to have been done by the Indians, yet I forbore giving the particulars of such barbarous acts, suspecting it might be too offensive to Christian ears, even in the history of savages. Here, however, I think it useful to give a circumstantial account of this horrid act; to shew, on one hand, what courage and resolution, virtue, the love of glory, and the love of one's country, can instil into men's minds, even where the knowledge of true religion is wanting; and, on the other hand, how far a false policy, under a corrupt religion, can debase even great minds."

He then proceeds to state, that the Count de Frontenac condemned two prisoners of the Five Nations to be burnt alive; that the Intendant's lady and the Jesuits entreated him to mitigate this sentence, but that the count declared there was a necessity of making such an example to frighten them from approaching the plantations, as the indulgence hitherto shewn had encouraged them to advance to the very gates of the French towns; and that the Indians having burnt alive so many French captives, justified this method of retaliating. "But, with submission to the politeness of the

CH. III. THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 55

French," adds Colden, " may I not ask whether every or any horrid action of a barbarous enemy can justify a civilized nation in doing the like?"

In order to prevent this execution, Colden men-, tions that the Jesuits applied to the Governor, but without success. The two Indians, after hearing their sentence, refused to listen to the instructions of the priests, and began to sing their deathsong. Some person threw a knife into the prison, with which one of them despatched himself. "The other," says Colden, "was carried out by the Christian Indians of Loretto to the place of execution, to which he walked, seemingly with as much indifference as ever martyr did to the stake. While they were torturing him, he continued singing-that he was a warrior, brave, and without fear; that the most cruel death could not shake his courage, that the most cruel torment should not draw an indecent expression from him; that his comrade was a coward, a scandal to the Five Nations, who had killed himself for fear of pain; and that he had the comfort to reflect that he had made many Frenchmen suffer as he did now. He fully verified his words, for the most violent torments would not force the least complaint from him, though his executioners tried their utmost skill to do it. They first broiled his feet between two red-hot stones, then they put his fingers into red-hot pipes, and though he had his arms at liberty, he would not