Iroquois Torture and Decapitation of White Captives Described
History of Orange County, New York 1888
There has been no more intellectual nation among the aborigines of
America than the Senecas of Western New York — the most original
and determined of the confederated Iroquois — but its warriors were
cruel like the others, and their squaws often assisted the men in torturing
their captives. When Boyd and Parker were captured in the Genesee
Valley in the Sullivan campaign of 1779, Brant, the famous half-breed
chief, assured them that they would not be injured, yet left them in the
hands of Little Beard, another chief, to do with as he would, and the
prolonged tortures to which he and his savage companions subjected
them were horrible. After they had been stripped and tied to trees, and
tomahawks were thrown so as to just graze their heads, Parker was un-
intenlionally hit so that his head was severed from his body, but Boyd was
made to suffer lingering miseries. His ears were cut off, his mouth
enlarged with knives and his severed nose thrust into it, pieces of flesh
were cut from his shoulders and other parts of his body, an incision was
made in his abdomen and an intestine fastened to the tree, when he was
scourged to make him move around it, and finally as he neared death, was
decapitated, and his head raised on a pole.
100 Real Historical Accounts