Chap. I.] IROQUOIS LITE. 19 



dance, the festival, the game of hazard, the race of 

 political ambition, all had their votaries. When 

 the assembled sachems had resolved on war against 

 some foreign tribe, and when, from their great coun- 

 cil-house of bark, in the Valley of Onondaga, their 

 messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to 

 arms, then from east to west, through the farthest 

 bounds of the confederacy, a thousand warlike 

 hearts caught up the summons. With fasting and 

 praying, and consulting dreams and omens ; with 

 invoking the war-god, and dancing the war-dance, 

 the warriors sought to insure the triumph of their 

 arms ; and then, their rites concluded, they be- 

 gan their stealthy progress through the devious 

 pathways of the forest. For days and weeks, in 

 anxious expectation, the villagers awaited the re- 

 sult. And now, as evening closed, a shrill, wild 

 cry, pealing from afar, over the darkening forest, 

 proclaimed the return of the victorious warriors. 

 The village was alive with sudden commotion ; and 

 snatching sticks and stones, knives and hatchets, 

 men, women, and children, yelling like fiends let 

 loose, swarmed out of the narrow portal, to visit 

 upon the captives a foretaste of the deadlier tor- 

 ments in store for them. The black arches of the 

 forest glowed with the fires of death; and with 

 brandished torch and firebrand the frenzied multi- 

 tude closed around their victim. The pen shrinks 

 to write, the heart sickens to conceive, the fierce- 

 ness of his agony ; yet still, amid the din of his 

 tormentors, rose his clear voice of scorn and defi- 

 ance. The work was done ; the blackened trunk 



