254 BRESSANI. 11644. 



flesh, and pulling out his hair and beard. " Sing ! " 

 cried one ; " Hold your tongue ! " screamed an- 

 other ; and if he obeyed the first, the second burned 

 him. " We will burn you to death ; we will eat 

 you." " I will eat one of your hands." " And I 

 will eat one of your feet." ^ These scenes were 

 renewed every night for a week. Every evening 

 a chief cried aloud through the camp, " Come, 

 my children, come and caress our prisoners ! " — 

 and the savage crew thronged jubilant to a large 

 hut, where the captives lay. They stripped off the 

 torn fragment of a cassock, which was the priest's 

 only garment ; burned him with live coals and red- 

 hot stones ; forced him to walk on hot cinders ; 

 biu'ned off now a finger-nail and now the joint of a 

 finger, — rarely more than one at a time, however, 

 for they economized their pleasures, and reserved 

 the rest for another day. This torture was pro 

 tracted till one or two o'clock, after which they left 

 him on the ground, fast bound to four stakes, and 

 covered only with a scanty fragment of deer-skin.^ 



1 " lis me repetaient sans cesse : Nous te briilerons ; nous te mange- 

 rons; — je te mangerai un pied; — et moi, une main," etc. — Bressani, in 

 Relation Ahrey€e, 137. 



2 " Chaque nuit apres m'avoir fait chanter, et m'avoir tourmente 

 comme ie I'ai dit, ils passaient environ un quart d'heure a me bruler un 

 ongle ou un doigt. II ne ra'en reste maintenant qu'un seul entier, et 

 encore ils en ont arrache I'ongle avec les dents. Un soir ils m'enlevaient 

 un ongle, le lendemain la premiere phalange, le jour suivant la seconde. 

 En six fois, ils en brulerent presque six. Aux mains seules, ils m'ont 

 applique le feu et le fer plus de 18 fois, et i'etais oblige de chanter pendant 

 ee supplice. Ils ne cessaient de me tourmenter qu'a une ou deux lieures 

 de la nuit." — Bressani, Relation Ahr^g^e, 122. 



Bressani speaks in another passage of tortures of a nature yet more 

 excruciating. They were similar to those alluded to by the anonymous 

 author of the Relation of 1660 : " le ferois rough- ce papier, et les oreilles 



