First French Foot- Prints Beyond the Lakes. 107 



We hear with a shock of hurning prisoners alive. Bat the 

 fathers had little to say against the custom. On the other hand, 

 such an execution seemed to them a means of conversion akin to 

 a Spanish awto dafe, and equally efficacious. One of the mission- 

 aries wrote home as follows .: 



" An Iroquois was to be burned some way off. What consolation 

 is it to set forth in the hottest summer to deliver this victim from 

 hell. The father approaches, and instructs him even in the midst 

 of his torments. Forthwith the faith finds a place in his heart. 

 He adores as the author of his life Him whose name he had 

 never heard till the hour of his own death. He receives baptism, 

 and in his place of torture cries: "I am about to die but I go to 

 dwell in heaven." How history repeats itself ! In 1877 the last 

 words of Henry Norfolk on the scaffold in Annapolis were : " I 

 am here to hang for the murder of ray wife, but I thank God I 

 am going to glory !" 



Again, the record is: On the day of the visitation of the Holy 

 Virgin, the chief Aontarisati was taken prisoner by our Indians, 

 instructed by our fathers, baptized, burnt, and ascended to heaven, 

 all on the same day. I doubt not that he thanked the Virgin for 

 his misfortune and the blessing that followed. Happy thought! 



Another missionary writes : " We have very rarely indeed seen 

 the burning of an Iroquois without feeling sure that he was on 

 the path to Paradise, and we never knew one of them to be on 

 that path without seeing him burnt." Happy thought. 



The conclusion of the whole matter then is : " The only way to 

 save Indians is to burn them," or as they now say in Texas : 

 ^' Scalp them first, and then preach to them," 



Powerful motives then hurried the Jesuits vfherever an infant 

 was death-struck, or a captive in torture. 



Various secular influences speeded the missiodaries on their 

 western way. 



First, the spirit of religion was reinforced by that passion for ro- 

 mantic adventure which we have just been surveying. Then, 

 according to Father Biard, the French king, the most dissolute of 

 men, initiated the Jesuit projeat. Preachers who were over- 

 zealous he liked to ship off, and so transfer their soul-stinging ser- 



