Gauntlet (punishment) - Native American Usage

Native American Usage

A number of Native American tribes of the Eastern Woodlands culture area forced prisoners to run the gantlet. (See Captives in American Indian Wars.) The Jesuit Isaac Jogues was subject to this treatment while a prisoner of the Iroquois in 1641. He described the ordeal in a letter that appears in the book The Jesuit Martyrs of North America : "Before arriving (at the Iroquois Village) we met the young men of the country, in a line armed with sticks...", and he and his fellow Frenchmen were made to walk slowly past them "for the sake of giving time to anyone who struck us."

Other European-Americans captured by Indians and made to run the gantlet included John Stark, Daniel Boone, James Smith, Col. William Crawford, Simon Kenton, Lieutenant-Colonel John B. McClelland, and Susanna Willard Johnson.

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