Whether or not these articles of faith formed a part of the teachings of Thury and his fellow-apostles, there is no doubt that it was a recognized part of their functions to keep their converts in hostility to the English, and that their credit with the civil powers depended on their success in doing so. The same holds true of the priests of the mission villages in Canada. They avoided all that might impair the warlike spirit of the neophyte, and they were well aware that in savages the warlike spirit is mainly dependent on native ferocity. They taught temperance, conjugal fidelity, devotion to the rites of their religion, and submission to the priest; but they left the savage a savage still. In spite of the remonstrances of the civil authorities, the mission Indian was separated as far as possible from intercourse with the French, and discouraged from learning the French tongue. He wore a crucifix, hung wampum on the shrine of the Virgin, told his beads, prayed three times a day, knelt for hours before the Host, invoked the saints, and confessed to the priest; but, with rare exceptions, he murdered, scalped, and tortured like his heathen countrymen. [6] [6] The famous Ouréhaoué, who had been for years under the influence of the priests, and who, as Charlevoix says, died "un vrai Chrétien," being told on his death-bed how Christ was crucified by the Jews, exclaimed with fervor: "Ah! why was not I there? I would have revenged him: I would have had their scalps." La Potherie, IV. 91. Charlevoix, after his fashion on such occasions, suppresses the revenge and the scalping, and instead makes the dying Christian say, "I would have prevented them from so treating my God." The savage custom of forcing prisoners to run the gauntlet, and sometimes beating them to death as they did so, was continued at two, if not all, of the mission villages down to the end of the French domination. General Stark of the Revolution, when a young man, was subjected to this kind of torture at St. Francis, but saved himself by snatching a club from one of the savages, and knocking the rest to the right and left as he ran. The practice was common, and must have had the consent of the priests of the mission.