1649.: Iroquois ferocity. 385 



in hand. The Jesuits prayed without ceasing, 

 and Saint Joseph was besieged with invocations. 

 " Those of us who were priests," writes Rague- 

 neau, " each made a vow to say a mass in his 

 honor every month, for the space of a year ; and all 

 the rest bound themselves by vows to divers pen- 

 ances." The expected onslaught did not take place. 

 Not an Iroquois appeared. Their victory had been 

 bought too dear, and they had no stomach for 

 more fighting. All the next day, the eighteenth, 

 a stillness, like the dead lull of a tempest, followed 

 the turmoil of yesterday, — as if, says the Father 

 Superior, " the country were waiting, palsied with 

 fright, for some new disaster." 



On the following day, — the journalist fails not 

 to mention that it was the festival of Saint Joseph, 

 — Indians came in with tidings that a panic had 

 seized the Iroquois camp, that the chiefs could not 

 control it, and that the whole body of invaders was 

 retreating in disorder, possessed with a vague 

 terror that the Hurons were upon them in force. 

 They had found time, however, for an act of atro- 

 cious cruelty. They planted stakes in the bark 

 houses of St. Ignace, and bound to them those 

 of their prisoners whom they meant to sacrifice, 

 male and female, from old age to infancy, hus- 

 bands, mothers, and children, side by side. Then, 

 as they retreated, they set the town on fire, and 

 laughed with savage glee at the shrieks of anguish 

 that rose from the blazing dwellings.^ 



1 The site of St. Ignace still bears evidence of the catastrophe, in the 

 ashes and charcoal that indicate the position of the houses, and the frag- 



33 



