12 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

maple ribs ; their warlike weapons consisted of bows and arrows, stone battle axes, and war clubs of wood,——all of which have been supplanted by fire-arms, spears, knives and axes, made of iron and steel.

Their mode of warfare was cruel. They used to scalp their enemies whom they killed, and torment those taken alive, at which the squaws were more barbarous then the men, seeming to regard the torturing of prisoners as their share of the glory of a victory over the enemy.

A French writer who visited the Island during their occupa— tion gave an account of an atrocious act he had witnessed at Port-l’e—Joie during his sojourn there. It appeared that a young man of Nova Scotia had been captured and taken before the Chief accused of being an English spy. Of this charge the prisoner cleared himself to the satisfaction of the Indians, when one of the squaws present claimed the prisoner as being guilty. Having at length prevailed with the Council, the prisoner was handed over to the squaws: whereupon his torture then proceeded with all the fury that their imagina- tions could invent or knives and fire inflict,- his sufferings were long and severe, but death at last put an end to them.

In Murdoch’s History we find it asserted that from the Island of St. John the inhuman practice of killing the English settlers of Nova Scotia and taking their scalps to the Governor of the colony was carried on by the Indians. Those people were of the tribe of Mic-mac, as also were those of Nova Scotia, by the ties of brotherhood, therefore they were strongly cemented, and when the English came to inhabit these regions they encountered a united hostility, which only ceased through the medium of a permanent peace between England and France.

On the eve of any hostile visitation—as was customary—a war-feast was provided, where the glittering blaze of the Council fire beamed on the young, the aged and the daring, sending forth their war whoops in tones of defiance. Again, the tiger strife being over, the fire blaze afresh, shouts of merriment resound, while gory trophys, fruits of inhuman deeds, hung from many girdles.

But all this has passed away. Seeds of new life has been sown over the ground, which after a period of two hundred years have choked the weed of barbarism and changed the face