Brebeuf himself, after twenty years of zeal and labour in his vocation, having been taken prisoner by the Iroquois, in 1649, was put to death amidst the most cruel torments. Père Gabriel Lallemant, another Jesuit missionary, made captive at the same time, was also burnt alive. Père Daniel, who had accompanied Brebeuf in his first mission into the interior, was likewise taken prisoner and killed by them. Jogues, Charles Garnier, Buteux, La Ribourde, Goupil, Constantin, Garreau, Liegeouis, together with many of their European companions and attendants, were also put to death, chiefly by the Iroquois. A similar fate befell many other missionaries who resided among the tribes inhabiting Louisiana and the countries of New France, situated upon the rivers which run into the Missisippi from the east. Numbers also who escaped from death were cruelly maimed and mutilated; others entirely disappeared, whose fate was not ascertained, and who were never afterwards heard of.

Upon the subject of these and numerous other instances of barbarity, the French writers naturally expatiated with the greatest horror. The military officers, also, who were employed in opposing the savages in the field, and who felt themselves surrounded by the extreme dangers attendant upon such sanguinary campaigns, confirmed, and every where circulated, the accounts of these barbarities. In war, nothing can exceed Indian ferocity: every

term of reproach, every opprobrious epithet, has therefore been heaped upon the natives, by those who were witnesses of their fury, and who unwillingly experienced the accumulated dangers of Indian warfare. But let us not be too hastily led away by these indiscriminate charges against the North American Indians. No rational person can, in the slightest degree, approve of the uncontrolled fury exhibited in their hostilities, nor consider with indifference the barbarity with which the prisoners of war are put to death, in cold blood, by the most studied and refined cruelty. How that horrid custom came at first to be adopted among the aboriginal inhabitants, is a subject probably far beyond the reach of human inquiry. It had existed, no doubt, for ages before North America was discovered by the Europeans, and continued to be handed down from father to son with superstitious adherence. It may be said to have formed part of the fixed and admitted national code among all the Indians of North America. Particular tribes may have differed as to the adoption of particular rules and customs; but the practice in question appears to have been always common to the whole of the Indian nations. It was universally and rigidly adhered to by their sachems, chiefs, and warriors, and carefully inculcated to their children, who were brought up to consider it equally imperative upon them to inflict the most cruel torments upon their

foes, when captured in war, as to bear with fortitude and contempt the tortures to which it might be their own fate to be sentenced. "The Indians,” writes Lafitau, seem to prepare themselves for this from the most tender age. Their children have been observed to press their naked arms against each other, and put burning cinders between them, defying each other's fortitude in bearing the pain which the fire occasioned. I myself saw a child of five or six years old, who, having been severely burnt by some boiling water accidentally thrown upon it, sang its death-song with the most extraordinary constancy every time they dressed the sores, although suffering the most severe pain!"* In short, to bear and to inflict torture formed a principal part of their education; and the Indian was as much trained to consider it his duty to punish and torture his enemy, as the Christian is taught to forgive him.

But, were the American Indians to be branded by the French, and other writers, as wild beasts, blood-hounds, cannibals, heathen demons, &c., &c., for adhering to customs which had been regularly and sacredly transmitted to them by their ancestors from the most remote ages ? By all civilized nations these manners and customs are justly considered barbarous, and calling for every rational

* Mœurs des Sauvages Américains, &c. vol. iv. ch. 1.

exertion to have them completely abolished. Barbarous, however, as they may be, are they more so than those which have been perpetrated, hundreds and thousands of times, among the European nations who have boasted of Christianity and civilization? The task, indeed, would not be a very agreeable one to balance the account of barbarity committed in the Old world, with that committed in the New; or to contrast the cruelties perpetrated by the Indians of North America, with those which were practised, about the same periods, throughout the civilized and Christian nations of Europe. But it surely cannot be denied, that the bigotted and bloody persecutions so long carried on amongst the Europeans-the executions caused by the blind rage of fanaticism-the sanguinary martyrdoms -the prisons, racks, and flames of the Inquisition-merited the title of barbarous fully as much as any of the customs followed by the North American savages. In the latter case, these customs were handed down by established usage from time immemorial, among a rude and uninstructed race; in the former, the cruelties were sanctioned and directed by public authorities, and by the su→ perior classes, by priests. and crowned heads, who boasted the light of revealed religion, and whose education and knowledge ought to have taught them to prevent, rather than to permit, such unchristian barbarities. At the very period when the Indians

of Canada were so vilified for practising their accustomed cruelties upon enemies employed against them-employed by that mercantile association who, with the Cardinal de Richelieu at its head, was directing the affairs of New France, that minister was himself gravely presiding in the council of the King, upon the case of the celebrated curate of Laudun, whom they condemned and burnt alive, on the charge of raising legions of devils, and exercising other practices of the black art! During one of the reigns also in which we find the American Indians so much reviled by the French Jesuits for their acts of savage ferocity, the widow of the Mareschal d'Ancre, after her husband had been barbarously murdered by officers in the employment of the crown, was tried and condemned by a judicial tribunal in France, and burnt alive for being a sorceress. And not many years before, about six hundred persons, within the jurisdiction of the Par liament of Bordeaux, were tried, condemned, and most of them burnt alive, on like charges.-These, and the worse than Indian barbarities inflicted on the Huguenots, were committed in the reigns of Louis the Just, and of Louis the Great!

But, in comparing the barbarism of the native inhabitants of North America with that of people professing the mild doctrines of Christianity, we need not travel so far as Old France to exhibit instances in which the former were equalled by the