In the spring of 1649, a party of Huron warriors surprised roughly twenty-five or thirty Iroquois fishermen on the shore of Lake Ontario, which the Iroquois called the Lake of the Iroquois. Eight of the fishermen were taken captive; the rest fled. Of the eight prisoners brought back toward Huronia, only seven survived the journey. The eighth had been killed along the way, and only his head was kept.
Once the war party was beyond the reach of any pursuing enemy, the warriors halted and held a council. They decided that six of the prisoners would be divided among the Ataronchraton and Arendaronon nations, and the seventh would be given to the village where the Jesuit missionaries lived among the Atigouantan. Because these three nations had composed the war party, the captives were distributed among them. When the prisoners finally arrived in Huronia, the old men of the tribes—who traditionally received the spoils of war from returning warriors—held another council to decide which villages would receive each captive.
It was the custom to give an enemy prisoner to a notable person who had lost a relative in war, so that the captive might dry the mourner’s tears and partly assuage his grief. The Jesuits were present in the village when the prisoner intended for them arrived. They saw him coming from a distance, singing in the midst of thirty or forty Indians who escorted him. He wore a fine beaver robe, with a string of wampum beads around his neck and another strung like a crown around his head.
A large crowd had gathered to witness his arrival. The captive was made to sit at the entrance of the village while the elders decided who would command him to sing. He had already been roughly handled. One hand was badly bruised by a stone.
A finger had been violently wrenched away. The thumb and forefinger of his other hand had been nearly severed by a hatchet blow. Both arms were badly burned, and one arm joint bore a deep cut. Despite his wounds, he sang with remarkable vigor when commanded, which was notable given that he was over fifty years old and had been singing day and night since his capture.
The chief addressed him warmly: “My nephew, you have good reason to sing, for no one is doing you any harm. Behold yourself now among your kindred and friends. ”
Throughout his journey through Huronia, the prisoner had been given the means to hold feasts, a customary courtesy extended to captives. In this village, a dog was put into a kettle, and while it cooked, the prisoner was brought into the house where the feast would be held.
When the dog was ready, he was made to eat a large piece of it, the meat put directly into his mouth because his hands were useless to him. He shared it with those near him. The pain in his hands became so unbearable that he asked to step outside for air. His request was granted.
When his hands were unwrapped and refreshed with fresh water, they were found to be half putrefied, swarming with worms, and giving off an almost unbearable stench. He asked that the worms be removed, and they were. Through the rest of the night, the old men of the village and the chiefs guarding him talked with the prisoner about his capture and the affairs of his country. The next day, he was escorted to another village a league away, singing as usual.
That evening he made a feast, sang, and danced for most of the night. In this village, the people were waiting for the return of a chief who had gone trading, for the captive was entirely at his disposal. When the chief arrived, he spoke with the prisoner. “My nephew,” he said, “you must know that when I first received news that you were at my disposal, I was wonderfully pleased, fancying that he whom I lost in war had been, as it were, brought back to life.
I resolved to give you your life and was already preparing a place for you in my house. But now that I see you in this condition, your fingers gone and your hands half rotten, I change my mind. I am sure that you yourself would now regret to live longer. I shall do you a greater kindness to tell you that you must prepare to die.
Is that not so? It is the Tontorats that have treated you so ill and who also caused your death. Come then, my nephew, be of good courage. Prepare yourself for this evening and do not allow yourself to be cast down through fear of the tortures.
”
The prisoner asked how he would be killed, and the chief replied that he would die by fire. While they spoke, a sister of the deceased Huron whom the captive was to replace in adoption brought him food. She treated him almost as if he were her own son, her face sad and her eyes full of tears. The chief himself put his pipe into the prisoner’s mouth, wiped the sweat from his face, and fanned him with a feather fan.
About noon, the captive held his farewell feast, called the atatayon. Everyone was free to attend, and crowds came. Before the feast began, the prisoner walked through the middle of the house and said in a loud, confident voice: “My brothers, I am going to die. Amuse yourselves boldly around me.
I fear neither tortures nor death. ” Then he sang and danced the length of the house, and others joined in. After the feast, the captive was taken back to the village where he had first been brought, to die. The torture took place in the house of the war chief, where all war councils were held.
About eight in the evening, eleven fires were lit along the length of the house, spaced about a fathom apart. The people crowded in, the old men taking places on platforms that ran along both sides, the young men below. Cries of joy resounded on all sides as each person armed himself with a firebrand or a piece of burning bark. Before the prisoner was brought in, a chief urged everyone to do their duty, telling them of the importance of the act, which was viewed by the sun and by the god of war.
He ordered that at first they should burn only the prisoner’s legs, so that he might hold out until daybreak. The captive entered, and the cries redoubled. He was made to sit on a mat, his hands bound. Then he rose and made a tour of the house, singing and dancing.
When he returned to his place, the war chief took his robe and announced that a particular chief would despoil him of it, and that the Adarondacks would cut off his head, which would be given to the Odesseny along with one arm and the liver, to make a feast. Then each man armed himself with a brand, and as the captive ran around the fires, each tried to burn him as he passed. He shrieked, and the crowd imitated or smothered his cries with their own shouts. They stopped him at one end of the house, broke the bones of his hands, pierced his ears with sticks which they left in them, and bound his wrists with cords, pulling each end with all their might.
When he paused to catch his breath, he was made to rest on hot ashes and burning coals. On the seventh round, his strength failed. After resting briefly on the embers, he did not rise when ordered. One Indian applied a brand to his loins, and the prisoner fainted.
The chiefs ordered the torturers to stop, saying it was important that he live until daybreak. He was placed on a mat, most of the fires were extinguished, and many people left. After an hour, he began to revive and was commanded to sing. At first his voice was broken and dying, but finally he sang so loudly that he could be heard outside the house.
The youth assembled and resumed the torture. As they took turns, they devised new methods to make him feel the fire more keenly. His legs were barely burned anywhere except in shreds of flesh. Some applied burning brands and did not withdraw them until he cried out, repeating this seven or eight times.
Others bound cords around him and set them on fire, slowly burning him. Some made him stand on red-hot hatchets and pressed down on his feet. They struck him with clubs on the head, passed sticks through his ears, and broke the rest of his fingers. As they burned him, they taunted him.
One said, “Here, uncle, I must burn you. ” Another called him a canoe: “Come, let me caulk and pitch my canoe. It is a beautiful new canoe which I lately traded for. I must stop all the water holes well.
” Another asked where he preferred to be burned, and the captive had to indicate a place. Someone said, “For my part, I do not know anything about burning. It is a trade that I have never practiced,” while performing crueler tortures than the others. Some pretended he was cold and offered to warm him.
One said, “As my uncle has kindly come to live and die among the Hurons, I must give him a present. I must give him a hatchet,” and applied a red-hot hatchet to his feet. Another made him stockings from old rags and set them on fire. Often, after making him cry out, the torturer would ask, “And now, uncle, have you had enough?
” When the prisoner replied, “Yes, nephew, it is enough,” they answered, “No, it is not enough,” and continued burning him at intervals. From time to time they gave him food and poured water into his mouth, so that he might last until morning. Green ears of corn roasted alongside the red-hot hatchets. If he refused to eat, they said, “Indeed, do you think you are master here?
” and reminded him that he had been cruel to prisoners in his own country. As day began to break, fires were lighted outside the village in order to display the cruelties to the sun. The victim was led to a scaffold six or seven feet high, where he was tied to a tree so that he was free to turn around. Then they burned him more severely than ever, leaving no part of his body untouched.
They thrust brands down his throat and forced them into his fundament. They burned his eyes, applied red-hot hatchets to his shoulders, and hung burning brands around his neck, placing them on his back and chest according to how he moved to avoid their weight. If he tried to sit or crouch, someone thrust a brand from under the scaffolding to make him rise. They harassed him until he was out of breath, then poured water into his mouth to strengthen his heart.
The chief said he should take a little breath, but the prisoner remained still. Fearing he would die other than by the knife, one Indian cut off a foot, another a hand, and a third cut off his head almost at the same time. The head was thrown to the crowd, caught, and taken to the village chief to whom it had been promised, so that he could make a feast. The trunk remained in the village, and a feast was made of it the same day.
If a prisoner had been particularly brave before death, the Indians would eat his heart, blood, and roasted flesh in order to gain courage. Sometimes a man made an incision in his own neck and let the tortured prisoner’s blood run into it, believing that once the enemy’s blood had mingled with his own, he would never be surprised by the enemy. At the feast, the head of the prisoner was given not to the chief but to the lowest person in the company. Some ate of the prisoner with horror, others with relish.
After sunset, the prisoner’s soul was expelled from the houses by a horrible and universal noise. The souls of enemies who died in other ways, and those of friends and relatives, were not feared. Within the year that followed, the Iroquois conquered and dispersed the Hurons. Beginning in 1650, different branches of the Huron people relocated.
One branch, the Wyandots, moved into the area near Detroit, Michigan, and would later engage in raids on American frontier settlements during the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s War, the American Revolution, and the Northwest Indian War. The account of the torture survives largely because the Jesuits recorded it in detail. It remains one of the only written accounts of the Huron people, and a grim record of what happened to one Iroquois man who fell into their hands in 1649.
