chunk: The frame story: A young disillusioned Frenchman, René, has joined an Indian tribe and married a woman named Céluta. On a hunting expedition, one moonlit night, René asks Chactas, the old man who adopted him, to relate the story of his life.
  At the age of seventeen, the Natchez Chactas loses his father during a battle against the Muscogees. He flees to St Augustine, Florida, where he is raised in the household of the Spaniard Lopez. After 2½ years, he sets out for home, but is captured by the Muscogees and Seminoles. The chief Simagan sentences him to be burnt in their village.