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_.