If the conquerors hope to effect their escape without difficulty, the prisoners are treated with some degree of humanity, till the victors reach the frontiers of their peculiar residence. But here they begin to feel the misery of their situation. A messenger is despatched to announce their arrival, and to inform the elders of the tribe, that the expedition has been successful ; the cry of death is raised ; and the women, and young men who are incapable of bearing arms, come forth to meet the captives, and bruise them, as they pass, with clubs and stones in the most shocking manner. (1 18.) To this succeed lamentations on the part of the conquerors for those who have fallen ; and these arc changed by a rapid and unexpected transition into re joicings for the victory which they have gained. Both their sorrow and their joy are accompanied with extra vagant looks and gestures, all barbarously expressive of the feelings with which they are animated. The old men then determine the fate of the prisoners. They are either adopted into the community, or they are tor tured to death, in order to appease the ghosts of those who have been slain, or to satiate the revenge of the conquerors, who eat their flesh with transports of avi dity and pleasure.
As it is a maxim of Indian warfare, seldom to give quarter or to take it ; and as every warrior lights, not to overcome his enemies, but to destroy them; the race of American savages would, in a few generations, have been extinct, if some method of recruiting their num bees had not been devised. Hence, the resentment of the tribe occasionally yields to the necessity of support ing the population, and the captives are admitted to all the privileges and protection which the society can af ford. They are led to the huts of those who have been killed : if the women receive them, their sufferings arc at an end ; they become instantly a part of the community, and they are allowed to sit on the mats of the deceased. They hold the rank of those whose places they occupy ; and, ever after, they are treated with the respect and kindness which arc due to a father or a brother, to a husband or a friend. By their own tribe they arc consi dered as degraded and lost. They never think of return ing to their former associates, and they would not be ad mitted into their number, if they should do so.' They incorporate with those who have spared them, and adopt their jealousies, their hatreds, and their resentments, with as much zeal as if they had originally belonged to the community into which they have been received. But if the women refuse to admit them, their doom is irre vocably fixed: nothing can save them from torture and death. In the mean time, while their fate is undecided, the prisoners do not testify the smallest concern : they converse with those who are near them, by interpreters, or otherwise, on matters of indifference ; and smoke as quietly and freely as if they had no interest what ever in the proceedings of the victorious tribe. When their destiny is announced to them, they still maintain their inflexibility, and prepare to suffer with all their fortitude.
It is seldom that the resentment of a savage yields to considerations of policy : and nothing but the experience that wars cannot be carried on, and that resentment itself cannot be gratified without supporting their num bers, could induce the American Indians to spare the lives of those who fall into their hands. Unaccustomed to the institutions of happier countries, and a milder religion, they have no conception of the soft and secret pleasure which attends an act of compassion towards an enemy ; but to torture their prisoners, and to devour them, are the sources of the highest and most exquisite delight to their barbarous natures.
The captives are gathered into one place, and the whole nation assembles as to a festival. A scaffold is erected, and the prisoners arc tied to a stake, but so as to have liberty to move around it ; here they raise their death-song, and set the utmost cruelty of the it enimite at defiance. The mind which is not altogether a strait ger to pity, revolts at the scene which follows. Tht Fortitude of the sufferers calls upon us For admiration ; but the ingenuity in giving pain, and the ceaseless per severance of their tormentors, excite our mondee and our abhorrence. Alen, women, and children, rush upon the unhappy victims. They beat them W ith clubs, the'. tear them with pincers, they burn their limbs with ho' irons, they drag their nails front their fingt rs, one by one, they wound them with knives, and cut circles and gashes in various parts of their buddies; and these they instantly sear, in order to prevent all effusion of blood. which mould tcrminzac the agony of the surkre•. vie with each other in refinements of torture. One takes a finger in his mouth, and gnaws it, and tears off the flesh with his teeth; another thrusts the mangled linger into the bowl of a pipe, made red-hot, and smoke• it like tobacco; a third pounds the toes of the wretch between two stones; and a fourth, smearing his face with the blood of the victim, dances round the stake in a transport of fury and joy. Some twist the bare nerves and tendons ; and others pull and stretch the limbs in every way that can increase the torment. Nothing sets hounds to their rage, hut the tear of killing the sufferer at once ; and so cautiously do they refrain from hurting the %ital parts, that this scene of misery often continues for several days. They sometimes unbind the prisoner. to give a breathing to their vengeance, and to think of other tortures. They do it also in order to refresh the sufferer, who has perhaps fallen into a profound sleep, worn out with pain, and wearied with enduring. They rouse hint, however, by the application of lire, and tie him again to the stake. Their cruelty, which seems to have gathered strength in the interval, is renewed. They pull out his teeth, and thrust out his eyes; they stick him all over with matches, of a wood which burns slowly, yet easily takes fire ; they run sharp reeds into the fleshy parts of his body ; they tear the skin from his head, and pour boiling water on the naked skull ; and after having burnt and mangled him, so that he has al most lost the appearance of a human creature, they once more release him from his bonds; when torn, roasted, and blind, staggering through weakness from side to side, and falling into their fires at every step, he is despatched with a dagger or a club. This last opera tion is generally performed by one of the chiefs, who, weary with cruelty, or hungry for the remaining flesh of the victim, puts an end to his sufferings and his exis tence. In these transactions of blood and horror, the women, strangers to c‘ery fueling of humanity and mo desty, even outdo the men: the elders of the tribe sit quietly round the stake, smoking and looking on with an utter absence of emotion.—See Charlevoix, His!. de la A'intv. France, iii. 243. Lafitau, ..11aurs de.r Sauv. i;. 277, and particularly ..11einairt s p:r Don Ulloa, ii. 406, note.