George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[283] the Iroquois welcomed the defeated Hurons. Some-

Chap. XXII.}

times a captive was saved, to be adopted in place of a warrior who had fallen. In that event the allegiance, and, as it were, the identity, of the captive, the current of his affections and his duties, became changed. The children and the wife whom he had left at home, are to be blotted from his memory: he is to be the departed chieftain, resuscitated and brought back from the dwelling-place of shadows, to cherish those whom he cherished; to hate those whom he hated; to rekindle his passions; to retaliate his wrongs; to hunt for his cabin; to fight for his clan. And the foreigner thus adopted is esteemed to stand in the same relations of consanguinity, and to be bound by the same restraints in regard to marriage.

More commonly, it was the captive's lot to endure torments and death, in the forms which Brebeuf has described. On the way to the cabins of his conquerors, the hands of an Iroquois prisoner were crushed between stones, his fingers torn off or mutilated, the joints of his arms scorched and gashed, while he himself preserved his tranquillity, and sang the songs of his nation. Arriving at the homes of his conquerors, all the cabins regaled him, and a young girl was bestowed on him, to be the wife of his captivity and the companion of his last loves. At one village after another, he was present at festivals which were given in his name, and at which he was obliged to sing. The old chief, who might have adopted him in place of a fallen nephew, chose rather to gratify revenge, and pronounced the doom of death. ‘That is well,’ was his reply. The sister of the fallen warrior, into whose place it had been proposed to receive him, still treated him with tenderness as a brother, offering him