A child cut off one of the captive's fingers. He was afterwards,
with his companion, tied up during two nights, half suspended in the air;
this made both suffer horribly; burning coals were applied to their flesh.
Finally, the missionary was handed over to an old squaw; he shortly after
became free, and returned to Quebec on the 5th of November, 1653, to the
joy of everybody.
His comrade, Tranchelot, after having had his fingers burnt, was finally
consumed by fire on the 8th September, 1653. Such were some of the
thrilling incidents of daily occurrence at Sillery two centuries ago.
What with breaches of military etiquette by M. de Maisonneuve's colonists,
the ferocity of skulking Iroquois, and the scrapes their own neophytes
occasionally got into, the reverend fathers in charge of the Sillery
mission must now and again have had lively times, and needed, we would
imagine, the patience of Job, with the devotion of martyrs, to carry out
their benevolent views.
We read in history [181] how, on one Sunday morning in 1652, the Sillery
Indians being all at mass, a beaver skin was stolen from one of the wig-
wams, on which a council of the chiefs being called, it was decided that
the robbery had been committed by a Frenchman, [182] enough to justify the
young men to rush out and seize two Frenchmen then accidentally passing
by, and in no wise connected - as the Indians even admitted - with the
theft.
