| Chapter 1: | Romantic Antiquarian Literature |
The antiquarians who gained access to these documents usually seized upon accounts of barbarity and instances of material deprivation to prove that the Native American lifeway was primitive and harsh. The missionaries were most active in the Great Lakes region, and their reports document Native American culture, including tales of torture. Elisabeth Tooker found enough detailed descriptions in the Jesuit Relations to write an analysis of Huron torture practices that was published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1964. Among other observations, she notes that it was customary to tear out a victim’s fingernails and sever the fingers. While the duration of sessions was variable, at least one full night was devoted to a captive’s torture:
Tooker describes the fate of an Iroquois fishing party captured on Lake Ontario. The Hurons returned to their village with eight captives and a severed head. Jesuit visitors saw a prisoner, a man whom they estimated to be fifty years old, clad in a beaver-skin robe with his neck and head wrapped in wampum. His hands were horribly mutilated by hatchet cuts, and he was badly bruised and burned. The Hurons encouraged their prisoner to eat, but because his hands were so badly mangled, he could not grasp the food. His captors forced large pieces of cooked dog meat down his throat. He was taken outside for fresh air and water, and the Jesuits noted that the man’s hands, beginning to rot, were crawling with worms.