Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations | Page 8

decided they were put to death, and in any way
they decreed. If the manner in which their friend had been killed was
aggravating and greatly enraged them, they were very likely to decide
upon torture, and inflicted it in a manner to produce the greatest
suffering. But in such cases, they sometimes showed great
magnanimity, and "returned good for evil."
Children were often adopted, and by a solemn ceremony received into a
particular tribe, and evermore treated as one of their own people. You
have been in the habit of listening to heart-rending stories of cruelties
to captives, but captives who were adopted were never cruelly treated.
Those who were immediately put to death experienced great suffering
for a few hours, and those who were preserved were subjected to
hardships which seemed to them unspeakable, but they were such as
are necessarily incident to Indian life. They left no written chronicles to

tell to all future generations the wrongs and tortures to which they were
subjected, but one who sits with them by their firesides, may have his
blood frozen with horror at the recitals of civilized barbarity.
And there was one species of wrong of which no captive woman of any
nation had to complain when she was thrown upon the tender mercies
of Indian warriors. Not among all the dark and terrible records which
their enemies have delighted to magnify, is there a single instance of
the outrage of that delicacy which a pure minded woman cherishes at
the expense of life, and sacrifices not to any species of mere animal
suffering. Of what other nation can it thus be written, that their soldiers
were not more terrible at the firesides of their enemies than on the
battle-field, with all the fierce engines of war at their command. To
whatever motive it is to be ascribed, let this at least stand out on the
pages of Indian history as an ever enduring monument to their honor.
A little book which professes to have been written for the sole purpose
of recording and perpetuating Indian atrocities, and dwells upon them
with infinite delight, alludes to this redeeming trait in Indian character,
but attempts to ascribe it to the influence of superstition, as it were
necessary to find some evil or deteriorating motive for everything noble,
or pleasing in Indian character. Their treatment of captives from among
Indian nations were the same. And I know not that there has been any
satisfactory solution of a characteristic which has been found among
only one other civilized christian or barbarous nation. A wanderer
among the Indian tribes once asked an Indian why they thus honored
their women, and he said "The Great Spirit taught, and would punish us
if we did not." Among the Germans I believed there existed the same
respect for woman, till they became civilized. They may have been
some superstitious fears mingled with a strong governing and
controlling principle, but it is not on this account the less marvelous
that whole nations, consisting of millions, should have been so trained,
religiously or domestically, that degree of beauty or fascination placed
under their care, though hundreds of miles in the solitudes of the
wilderness, should have tempted them from the strictest honor and the
most delicate kindness. MARY JANISON was eighty years a resident
among the Senecas, and in the early part of the time the forests had few
clearings, and the comforts and the vices of white men prevailed but
little among them. She was born on the ocean, with the billowy sea for

her cradle, and the tempest for her lullaby. Her parents emigrated from
England to this country in 1742, and settled in the unfortunate vale of
Wyoming, where date her first remembrances, which were all the woes
that fell upon her family, the wail of the sorrow-stricken and breaking
of heart-strings. The last meal they took together was a breakfast, after
which the father and eldest three sons went into the field, and Mary
with the other little children was playing not far from the house. They
were suddenly startled by a shriek, and knew it must be from their
mother. On running in they saw her in the hands of two Indians, who
were holding her fast. A little boy ran to call his father, and found him
also bound by another of the party, and his eldest brother lying dead
upon the earth; the other two fled to Virginia, where they had an uncle,
as Mary afterward learned, and those who remained were made
captives and hurried into the woods. All day they were obliged to
march in single file over the rough, cold soil. Night found them in the
heart of the wilderness, surrounded by their strange captors, and all the
horrors of