lity from all the miseries and
cares which wait on life, they were three times scourged, and made to
reckon the watches of the night by periods and intervals of torment.
They were then led out, in the severe depth of winter, which there at
certain seasons would be severe to any, to the Indians is most severe
and almost intolerable,--they were led out before break of day, and,
stiff and sore as they were with the bruises and wounds of the night,
were plunged into water; and whilst their jaws clung together with the
cold, and their bodies were rendered infinitely more sensible, the blows
and stripes were renewed upon their backs; and then, delivering them
over to soldiers, they were sent into their farms and villages to
discover where a few handfuls of grain might be found concealed, or to
extract some loan from the remnants of compassion and courage not
subdued in those who had reason to fear that their own turn of torment
would be next, that they should succeed them in the same punishment, and
that their very humanity, being taken as a proof of their wealth, would
subject them (as it did in many cases subject them) to the same inhuman
tortures. After this circuit of the day through their plundered and
ruined villages, they were remanded at night to the same prison,
whipped, as before, at their return to the dungeon, and at morning
whipped at their leaving it, and then sent, as before, to purchase, by
begging in the day, the reiteration of the torture in the night. Days of
menace, insult, and extortion, nights of bolts, fetters, and
flagellation, succeeded to each other in the same round, and for a long
time made up all the vicissitude of life to these miserable people.

But there are persons whose fortitude could bear their own suffering;
there are men who are hardened by their very pains, and the mind,
strengthened even by the torments of the body, rises with a strong
defiance against its oppressor. They were assaulted on the side of their
sympathy. Children were scourged almost to death in the presence of
their parents. This was not enough. The son and father were bound close
together, face to face and body to body, and in that situation cruelly
lashed together, so that the blow which escaped the father fell upon the
son, and the blow which missed the son wound over the back of the
parent. The circumstances were combined by so subtle a cruelty that
every stroke which did not excruciate the sense should wound and
lacer