Reverend Father Barthelemy Vimont presented a harrowing example of Iroquois torture that occurred in 1642 in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. In this account he told of an Iroquois war band that captured a small group of Algonquin and himself. Immediately the Iroquois cut off a few fingers from each captive using fish scales. The Iroquois intended to take the captives to their village. On the way one Algonquin woman, realizing what her fate would be, ran into a icy river and drowned herself rather than face the impending torture. Once they had arrived at their captors’ village, the Iroquois made their prisoners sing and dance upon a scaffold. Vimont’s companion, a converted Algonquin named Adrian, wouldn’t sing in the Iroquois’ language, and they slit his fingers lengthwise to cause him intense pain. Next they cleared the scaffold except for one Algonquin named Awessinipin, and they began burning his body with brands. The Iroquois forced an Algonquin woman to take a torch and burn Awessinipin and then killed her when she finally complied. Throughout this entire ordeal the Algonquin man showed no pain. They continued this torture throughout the night, building to a fervor, finally ending at sunrise by cutting his scalp open, forcing sand into the wound, and dragging his mutilated body around the camp. When they had finished, the Iroquois carved up and ate parts of his body.

The Jesuits Relations, The Explorations of Radisson, and Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison offer other detailed descriptions of Iroquois atrocities, but generally the torture followed the same pattern. First the victorious Iroquois warriors would mangle the prisoners’ hands; they did this by pulling out the captives’ fingernails and/or cutting off some of their fingers. The victors usually subjected the prisoners to a heavy beating at the same time. Thereafter the Iroquois took the captives to their village and subjected the men to the gantlet (or gauntlet). They then humbled those who survived in a number of ways; for example the Iroquois might strip them naked in front of the village and force them to sing and dance. This process always ended either in a slow death by fire and scalping or with adoption into the Iroquois village. The Iroquois tortured only men to death when they weren’t adopted; they either killed quickly women and children who were unadopted.

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The warriors were not the only ones who conducted the torture, however; the women and children of the village had just as much of an active role as the men did. While the captives were perched upon the scaffold, the children of the tribe would jab at the prisoner’s feet with knives. In addition to this, every person in the village took turns with the burning torches during the night ritual. In fact, the rest of the tribe would scorn anyone who did not partake in the torture as a weak and lazy individual. Because everyone took part, it becomes clear that besides being an act for grieving family members to vent their frustration on an unyielding victim and doing so feel avenged for the loved ones’ deaths, it was a reassertion of Iroquois dominance and power. Yet this second purpose seems of less importance considering the specialized nature of the mourning war. That is to say, the process of the mourning war is oriented far more towards the grieving matriarchs rather than the entire village.

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Though modern Americans do not associate other tribes with the practice of mourning wars, they performed the same methods of torture that the Iroquois did. These accounts are much less frequent than descriptions of Iroquois torture, nevertheless they do exist and are no less ruthless in nature. Samuel de Champlain’s notes contain accounts of the Algonquins, Montagnais, and Etechemins as the aggressors. After they captured a handful of Iroquois in battle, these "friendly" tribes proceeded to torture the captives to death. They burned the body of one captive Iroquois then poured water on him in cycles so that his flesh would fall off his body. When they had finally killed him and threw his innards into the river, the Indians told Champlain that this act was done in vengeance for their own mutilated tribesmen.