ve driven the country people inside the fort, so that
the population enrolled was larger than the real population of Three
Rivers. Sulte gives the normal population of Three Rivers in 1654 as
38 married couples, 13 bachelors, 38 boys, 26 girls--in all not 200.

[5] At first flush, this seems a slip in _Radisson's Relation_. Where
did the Mohawks get their guns? _New York Colonial Documents_ show
that between 1640 and 1650 the Dutch at Fort Orange had supplied the
Mohawks alone with four hundred guns.

[6] One of many instances of Radisson's accuracy in detail. All tribes
have a trick of browning food on hot stones or sand that has been taken
from fire. The Assiniboines gained their name from this practice: they
were the users of "boiling stones."

[7] I have asked both natives and old fur-traders what combination of
sounds in English most closely resembles the Indian war-cry, and they
have all given the words that I have quoted. One daughter of a chief
factor, who went through a six weeks' siege by hostiles in her father's
fort, gave a still more graphic description. She said: "you can
imagine the snarls of a pack of furiously vicious dogs saying 'ah-oh'
with a whoop, you have it; and you will not forget it!"

[8] This practice was a binding law on many tribes. Catlin relates it
of the Mandans, and Hearne of the Chipewyans. The latter considered it
a crime to kiss wives and children after a massacre without the bath of
purification. Could one know where and when that universal custom of
washing blood-guilt arose, one mystery of existence would be unlocked.

[9] I have throughout followed Mr. Sulte's correction of the name of
this governor. The mistake followed by Parkman, Tanguay, and
others--it seems--was first made in 1820, and has been faithfully
copied since. Elsewhere will be found Mr. Sulte's complete elucidation
of the hopeless dark in which all writers have involved Radisson's
family.

[10] If there were not corroborative testimony, one might suspect the
excited French lad of gross exaggeration in his account of Iroquois
tortures; but the Jesuits more than confirm the worst that Radisson
relates. Bad as these torments were, they were equalled by the deeds
of white troops from civilized cities in the nineteenth century. A
band of Montana scouts came on the body of a comrade horribly mutilated
by the Indians. They caught the culprits a few days afterwards.
Though the government report has no a