and placable.

The common opinion of the cruelty of the Iroquois has arisen mainly from
the custom which they occasionally practiced, like some other Indians,
of burning prisoners at the stake. Out of the multitude of their
captives, the number subjected to this torture was really very
small,--probably not nearly as large in proportion as the number of
criminals and political prisoners who, in some countries of Europe, at
about the same time, were subjected to the equally cruel torments of the
rack and the wheel. These criminals and other prisoners were so tortured
because they were regarded as the enemies of society. The motives which
actuated the Iroquois were precisely the same. As has been before
remarked, the mode in which their enemies carried on their warfare with
them was chiefly by stealthy and sudden inroads. The prowling warrior
lurked in the woods near the Iroquois village through the day, and at
night fell with hatchet and club upon his unsuspecting victims. The
Iroquois lawgivers deemed it essential for the safety of their people
that the men who were guilty of such murderous attacks should have
reason to apprehend, if caught, a direful fate.

If the comparatively few instances of these political tortures which
occurred among the Iroquois are compared with the awful list of similar
and worse inflictions which stain the annals of the most enlightened
nations of Europe and Asia, ancient and modern,--the crucifixions, the
impalements, the dreadful mutilations--lopping of hands and feet,
tearing out of eyes--the tortures of the rack and wheel, the red-hot
pincers, the burning crown, the noisome dungeon, the slow starvation,
the lingering death in the Siberian mines,--it will become evident that
these barbarians were far inferior to their civilized contemporaries in
the temper and arts of inhumanity. Even in the very method of punishment