Count Frontignac, whose sprightly manners and energetic character
supported the spirits of his countrymen amidst every reverse, was so
provoked with what he deemed the ingratitude of the Five Nations for
his kindness to them at Schenectady, that, besides encouraging his own
Indian allies to burn their prisoners alive, he at length condemned to a
death still more dreadful, two Mohawk warriors who had fallen into his
hands. In vain the French priests remonstrated against this sentence, and
urged him not to bring so foul a stain on the Christian name: the count
declared that every consideration must yield to the safety and defence
of his people, and that the Indians must not be encouraged to believe
that they might practise the extreme of cruelty on the French without
the hazard of having it retorted on themselves. If he had been merely
actuated by politic considerations, without being stimulated by revenge,
he might have plainly perceived, from the conduct of all the Indian
tribes in their wars with each other, that the fear of retort had no
efficacy whatever to restrain them from their barbarous practices, which
he now undertook to sanction as far as his example was capable of doing.
The priests, finding that their humane intercession was ineffectual,
repaired to the prisoners, and laboured to persuade them to embrace
the Christian name, as a preparation for the dreadful fate which they
were about to receive from Christian hands; but their instructions were
rejected with scorn and derision, and they found the prisoners determined
to dignify, by Indian sentiments and demeanour, the Indian death which
they had been condemned to undergo. Shortly before the execution, some
Frenchman, less inhuman than his governor, threw a knife into the prison,
and one of the Mohawks immediately dispatched himself with it: the other,
expressing contempt at his companion’s mean evasion from glory, walked to
the stake, singing in his death-chant, that he was a Mohawk warrior, that
all the power of man could not extort the least expression of suffering
from his lips, and that it was ample consolation to him to reflect that
he had made many Frenchmen suffer the same pangs that he must now himself
undergo. When attached to the stake, he looked round on his executioners,
their instruments of torture, and the assembled multitude of spectators,
with all the complacency of heroic fortitude; and, after enduring for
some hours, with composed mien and triumphant language, a series of
barbarities too atrocious and disgusting to be recited, his sufferings
were terminated by the interposition of a French lady, who prevailed with
the governor to order that mortal blow, to which human cruelty has given
the name of _coup de grace_ or stroke of _favour_.