La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

22 LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS. [1669Jsoon after their arrival a party of warriors appeared,with a young prisoner belonging to one ofthe tribesof that region. Galinde wanted to beg or buy himfrom his captors; but the Senecas had other intentions."I saw," writes the priest, "the most miserablespectacle I ever beheld in my life." It was theprisoner tied to a stake and tortured for six hourswith diabolical ingenuity, while the crowd dancedand yelled with delight, and the chiefs and elders satin a row smoking their pipes and watching the contortionsof the victim with an air of serene enjoyment.The body was at last cut up and eaten, and in theevening the whole populationoccupied themselves inscaring away the angry ghost by beating with sticksagainst the bark sides of the lodges.La Salle and his companions began to fear for theirown safety. Some of their hosts wished to kill themin revenge for the chief murdered near Montreal;and as these and others were at times in a frenzy ofdrunkenness, the position of the French becamecritical. They suspected that means had been usedto prejudice the Senecas against them. Not onlycould they get no guides, but they were toldthat ifthey went to the Ohio the tribes of those parts wouldinfallibly kill them.Their Dutch interpreter becamedisheartened and unmanageable, and, after staying amonth at the village, the hope of getting farther ontheir way seemed less than ever. Their plan, itwas clear, must be changed; and an Indian fromOtinawatawa, a kind of Iroquois colony at the head