The return of the warriors to their villages was always celebrated as a triumph.  The tribe marched out to meet them, singing, firing guns, shouting a welcome, dancing as the Israelites danced of old when victors returned from battle.  Men, women, and children lined up on each side armed with clubs and whips to scourge the captives.  Well for Radisson that he had won the warriors’ favor; for when the time came for him to run the gantlet of Iroquois diableries, instead of being slowly led, with trussed arms and shackled feet, he was stripped free and signalled to run so fast that his tormentors could not hit him.  Shrieks of laughter from the women, shouts of applause from the men, always greeted the racer who reached the end of the line unscathed.  A captive Huron woman, who had been adopted by the tribe, caught the white boy as he dashed free of a single blow clear through the lines of tormentors.  Leading him to her cabin, she fed and clothed him.  Presently a band of braves marched up, demanded the surrender of Radisson, and took him to the Council Lodge of the Iroquois for judgment.

Old men sat solemnly round a central fire, smoking their calumets in silence.  Radisson was ordered to sit down.  A coal of fire was put in the bowl of the great Council Pipe and passed reverently round the assemblage.  Then the old Huron woman entered, gesticulating and pleading for the youth’s life.  The men smoked on silently with deep, guttural “ho-ho’s,” meaning “yes, yes, we are pleased.”  The woman was granted permission to adopt Radisson as a son.  Radisson had won his end.  Diplomacy and courage had saved his life.  It now remained to await an opportunity for escape.

Radisson bent all his energies to become a great hunter.  He was given firearms, and daily hunted with the family of his adoption.  It so happened that the family had lost a son in the wars, whose name had signified the same as Radisson’s—­that is, “a stone”; so the Pierre of Three Rivers became the Orimha of the Mohawks.  The Iroquois husband of the woman who had befriended him gave such a feast to the Mohawk braves as befitted the prestige of a warrior who had slain nineteen enemies with his own hand.  Three hundred young Mohawks sat down to a collation of moose nose and beaver tails and bears’ paws, served by slaves.  To this banquet Radisson was led, decked out in colored blankets with garnished leggings and such a wealth of wampum strings hanging from wrists, neck, hair, and waist that he could scarcely walk.  Wampum means more to the Indian than money to the white man.  It represents not only wealth but social standing, and its value may be compared to the white man’s estimate of pink pearls.  Diamond-cutters seldom spend more than two weeks in polishing a good stone.  An Indian would spend thirty days in perfecting a single bit of shell into fine wampum.  Radisson’s friends had ornamented him for the feast in order to win the respect of the Mohawks for the French boy.  Striking his hatchet through a kettle of sagamite to signify thus would he break peace to all Radisson’s foes, the old Iroquois warrior made a speech to the assembled guests.  The guests clapped their hands and shouted, “Chagon, Orimha!—­Be merry, Pierre!” The Frenchman had been formally adopted as a Mohawk.