1644.] ESCAPE OF BRESSANI. 255 



The other prisoners had their share of torture ; but 

 the worst fell upon the Jesuit, as the chief man of 

 the party. The unhappy boy who attended him, 

 though only twelve or thirteen years old, was tor- 

 mented before his eyes with a pitiless ferocity. 



At length they left this encampment, and, after a 

 march of several days, — during Avhich Bressani, in 

 wading a rocky stream, fell from exhaustion and was 

 nearly drowned, — they reached an Iroquois town. 

 It is needless to follow the revolting details of the 

 new torments that succeeded. They hung him by 

 the feet with chains ; placed food for their dogs on 

 his naked body, that they might lacerate him as they 

 ate ; and at last had reduced his emaciated frame 

 to such a condition, that even they themselves 

 stood in horror of him. " I could not have be 

 lieved," he writes to his Superior, " that a man was 

 so hard to kill." He found among them those 

 who, from compassion, or from a refinement of 

 cruelty, fed him, for he could not feed himself. 

 They told him jestmgly that they wished to fatten 

 him before putting him to death. 



The council that was to decide his fate met on 

 the nineteenth of June, when, to the prisoner's 

 amazement, and, as it seemed, to their own surprise, 

 they resolved to spare his life. He was given, with 

 due ceremony, to an old woman, to take the place 

 of a deceased relative ; but, since he was as repul- 

 sive, in his mangled condition, as, by the Indian 



fremiroient, si ie rapportois les horribles traiteraens que les Agnieron- 

 nons " [the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois) " ont faits sur quelques captifs." 

 He adds, that past ages have never heard of such. — Relation, 1660, 7, 8. 



