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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
The savages stripped off his clothing, and reviving him gnawed his fingers to the bone. A number of the Hurons were captured and the whole party started southward, going through Lakes Champlain and George to the Mohawk villages. The captives were tortured to make sport for the savages. Jogues was clubbed, his hands and body mangled. He was stretched upon the ground, his legs and arms extended, and his ankles and wrists tied to stakes. Coals of fire were dropped upon his naked body. As his wounds began to heal they were nightly torn open afresh by the women and children, who took great delight in the torture. Several of the Huron captives were roasted
with slow fire at the stake and Jogues expected that his turn would soon come. The savages seemed constantly to devise new ways of physical torture, and when the good priest fainted from pain and exhaustion, they carefully resuscitated him for further indignities. He bore it all without flinching or murmuring, and never failed when the opportunity offered to baptize infants and administer his holy office to the dying. His two French companions were brained with tomahawks and Jogues momentarily expected to share their fate. The summer wore on and the cold of winter made his sufferings even more intense. Famishing from hunger and scantily clad he was made a slave to do the menial work of the camp. He was held in captivity in this fashion for more than a year when he finally escaped, going on board a Dutch vessel on the Hudson. The Indians were furious when they discovered his escape, and to pacify them the Dutch paid a large ransom. He afterward returned to France and presented himself to his superior, greatly to the astonishment of the latter who supposed him dead. The pope by special dispensation gave him the right to say mass in spite of the deformities of body inflicted by the teeth and knives of the savages.
MICHIGAN
Page 28
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