At night he was the first to cut wood for the camp fire.

About a week from the time they had left Lake St. Peter, they entered
Lake Champlain. On the shores of the former had been enacted the most
hideous of all Indian customs--the scalp dance. On the shores of the
latter was performed one of the most redeeming rites of Indian warfare.
Round a small pool of water a coppice of branches was interlaced. Into
the water were thrown hot stones till the enclosure was steaming. Here
each warrior took a sweat-bath of purification to prepare for reunion
with his family. Invoking the spirits as they bathed, the warriors
emerged washed--as they thought--of all blood-guilt.[8]

[Illustration: Map of the Iroquois country in the days of Radisson.]

In the night shots sounded through the heavy silence of the forest, and
the Mohawks embarked in alarm, compelling their white prisoner to lie
flat in the bottom of the canoe. In the morning when he awakened, he
found the entire band hidden among the rushes of the lake. They spent
several days on Lake Champlain, then glided past wooded mountains down
a calm river to Lake George, where canoes were abandoned and the
warriors struck westward through dense forests to the country of the
Iroquois. Two days from the lake slave women met the returning braves,
and in Radisson's words, "loaded themselves like mules with baggage."
On this woodland march Radisson won golden opinions for himself by two
acts: struck by an insolent young brave, he thrashed the culprit
soundly; seeing an old man staggering under too heavy a load, the white
youth took the burden on his own shoulders.

The return of the warriors to their villages was always celebrated as a
triumph. The tribe marched out to meet them, singing, firing guns,
shouting a welcome, dancing as the Israelites danced of old when
victors returned from battle. Men, women, and children lined up on
each side armed with clubs and whips to scourge the captives. Well for
Radisson that he had won the warriors' favor; for when the time came
for him to run the gantlet of Iroquois _diableries_, instead of being
slowly led, with trussed arms and shackled feet, he was stripped free
and signalled to run so fast that his tormentors could not hit him.
Shrieks of laughter from the women, shouts of applause from the men,
always greeted the racer who reached the end of the line unscathed. A
captive Huron woman, who had been adopted by the tribe, caught the