Others they destroyed by pouring on them, from time to time,
streams of scalding water. At other times they have been seen to hang
their victim to a sapling tree by the hands, bending it down until the
wretched sufferer has seen himself swinging up and down at the play of
the breeze, his feet often, within a foot of the ground. In a word, they
seem to have exhausted the invention and ingenuity of all time and all
countries in the horrid art of inflicting torture.
The mention of a circumstance equally extraordinary in the Indian
character, may be recorded here. If the sufferer in these afflictions be
an Indian, during the whole of his agony a strange rivalry passes
between them which shall outdo each other, they inflicting, and he in
enduring these tortures. Not a groan, not a sigh, not a distortion of
countenance is allowed to escape him. He smokes, and looks even
cheerful. He occasionally chants a strain of his war song. He vaunts his
exploits performed in afflicting death and desolation in their villages.
He enumerates the names of their relatives and friends that he has
slain. He menaces them with the terrible revenge that his friends will
inflict by way of retaliation. He even derides their ignorance in the
art of tormenting; assures them that he had afflicted much more
ingenious torture upon their people; and indicates more excruciating
modes of inflicting pain, and more sensitive parts of the frame to which
to apply them.
They are exceedingly dexterous in the horrid surgical operation of
taking off the scalp--that is, a considerable surface of the hairy
integument of the crown of the cranium.
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