1636, 1637.
THE FEAST OF THE DEAD.
Huron Graves • Preparation for the Ceremony • Disinterment • The
Mourning • The Funeral March • The Great Sepulchre • Funeral Games •
Encampment of the Mourners • Gifts • Harangues • Frenzy of the Crowd •
The Closing Scene • Another Rite • The Captive Iroquois • The Sacrifice.
Mention has been made of those great depositories of human bones found
at the present day in the ancient country of the Hurons. [1] They have
been a theme of abundant speculation; [2] yet their origin is a subject,
not of conjecture, but of historic certainty. The peculiar rites to
which they owe their existence were first described at length by
Brébeuf, who, in the summer of the year 1636, saw them at the town of
Ossossané.
[1] See Introduction.
[2] Among those who have wondered and speculated over these remains is
Mr. Schoolcraft. A slight acquaintance with the early writers would have
solved his doubts.
The Jesuits had long been familiar with the ordinary rites of sepulture
among the Hurons: the corpse placed in a crouching posture in the midst
of the circle of friends and relatives; the long, measured wail of the
mourners; the speeches in praise of the dead, and consolation to the
living; the funeral feast; the gifts at the place of burial; the funeral
games, where the young men of the village contended for prizes; and the
long period of mourning to those next of kin. The body was usually laid
on a scaffold, or, more rarely, in the earth. This, however, was not its
final resting-place. At intervals of ten or twelve years, each of the
four nations which composed the Huron Confederacy gathered together its
dead, and conveyed them all to a common place of sepulture. Here was
celebrated the great "Feast of the Dead,"--in the eyes of the Hurons,
their most solemn and important ceremonial.
In the spring of 1636, the chiefs and elders of the Nation of the
Bear--the principal nation of the Confederacy, and that to which
Ihonatiria belonged--assembled in a general council, to prepare for the
great solemnity. There was an unwonted spirit of dissension. Some causes
of jealousy had arisen, and three or four of the Bear villages announced
their intention of holding their Feast of the Dead apart from the rest.
As such a procedure was thought abhorrent to every sense of propriety
and duty, the announcement excited an intense feeling; yet Brébeuf, who
was present, describes the debate which ensued as perfectly calm, and
wholly free from personal abuse or recrimination. The secession,
however, took place, and each party withdrew to its villages to gather
and prepare its dead.
The corpses were lowered from their scaffolds, and lifted from their
graves. Their coverings were removed by certain functionaries appointed
for the office, and the hideous relics arranged in a row, surrounded by
the weeping, shrieking, howling concourse. The spectacle was frightful.
Here were all the village dead of the last twelve years. The priests,
connoisseurs in such matters, regarded it as a display of mortality so
edifying, that they hastened to summon their French attendants to
contemplate and profit by it. Each family reclaimed its own, and
immediately addressed itself to removing what remained of flesh from the
bones. These, after being tenderly caressed, with tears and
lamentations, were wrapped in skins and adorned with pendent robes of
fur. In the belief of the mourners, they were sentient and conscious. A
soul was thought still to reside in them; [3] and to this notion, very
general among Indians, is in no small degree due that extravagant
attachment to the remains of their dead, which may be said to mark the
race.
[3] In the general belief, the soul took flight after the great ceremony
was ended. Many thought that there were two souls, one remaining with
the bones, while the other went to the land of spirits.
These relics of mortality, together with the recent corpses,--which were
allowed to remain entire, but which were also wrapped carefully in
furs,--were now carried to one of the largest houses, and hung to the
numerous cross-poles, which, like rafters, supported the roof. Here the
concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral feast; and, as the
squaws of the household distributed the food, a chief harangued the
assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased, and extolling their
virtues. This solemnity over, the mourners began their march for
Ossossané, the scene of the final rite. The bodies remaining entire were
borne on a kind of litter, while the bundles of bones were slung at the
shoulders of the relatives, like fagots. Thus the procession slowly
defiled along the forest pathways, with which the country of the Hurons
was everywhere intersected; and as they passed beneath the dull shadow
of the pines, they uttered at intervals, in unison, a dreary, wailing
cry, designed to imitate the voices of disembodied souls winging their
way to the land of spirits, and believed to have an effect peculiarly
soothing to the conscious relics which each man bore. When, at night,
they stopped to rest at some village on the way, the inhabitants came
forth to welcome them with a grave and mournful hospitality.
From every town of the Nation of the Bear,--except the rebellious few
that had seceded,--processions like this were converging towards
Ossossané. This chief town of the Hurons stood on the eastern margin of
Nottawassaga Bay, encompassed with a gloomy wilderness of fir and pine.
Thither, on the urgent invitation of the chiefs, the Jesuits repaired.
The capacious bark houses were filled to overflowing, and the
surrounding woods gleamed with camp-fires: for the processions of
mourners were fast arriving, and the throng was swelled by invited
guests of other tribes. Funeral games were in progress, the young men
and women practising archery and other exercises, for prizes offered by
the mourners in the name of their dead relatives. [4] Some of the chiefs
conducted Brébeuf and his companions to the place prepared for the
ceremony. It was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in extent. In
the midst was a pit, about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. Around it
was reared a high and strong scaffolding; and on this were planted
numerous upright poles, with cross-poles extended between, for hanging
the funeral gifts and the remains of the dead.
[4] Funeral games were not confined to the Hurons and Iroquois: Perrot
mentions having seen them among the Ottawas. An illustrated description
of them will be found in Lafitau.
Meanwhile there was a long delay. The Jesuits were lodged in a house
where more than a hundred of these bundles of mortality were hanging
from the rafters. Some were mere shapeless rolls; others were made up
into clumsy effigies, adorned with feathers, beads, and belts of dyed
porcupine-quills. Amidst this throng of the living and the dead, the
priests spent a night which the imagination and the senses conspired to
render almost insupportable.
At length the officiating chiefs gave the word to prepare for the
ceremony. The relics were taken down, opened for the last time, and the
bones caressed and fondled by the women amid paroxysms of lamentation.
[5] Then all the processions were formed anew, and, each bearing its
dead, moved towards the area prepared for the last solemn rites. As they
reached the ground, they defiled in order, each to a spot assigned to
it, on the outer limits of the clearing. Here the bearers of the dead
laid their bundles on the ground, while those who carried the funeral
gifts outspread and displayed them for the admiration of the beholders.
Their number was immense, and their value relatively very great. Among
them were many robes of beaver and other rich furs, collected and
preserved for years, with a view to this festival. Fires were now
lighted, kettles slung, and, around the entire circle of the clearing,
the scene was like a fair or caravansary. This continued till three
o'clock in the afternoon, when the gifts were repacked, and the bones
shouldered afresh. Suddenly, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd ran
forward from every side towards the scaffold, like soldiers to the
assault of a town, scaled it by rude ladders with which it was
furnished, and hung their relics and their gifts to the forest of poles
which surmounted it. Then the ladders were removed; and a number of
chiefs, standing on the scaffold, harangued the crowd below, praising
the dead, and extolling the gifts, which the relatives of the departed
now bestowed, in their names, upon their surviving friends.
[5] "I'admiray la tendresse d'vne femme enuers son pere et ses enfans;
elle est fille d'vn Capitaine, qui est mort fort âgé, et a esté
autrefois fort considerable dans le Païs: elle luy peignoit sa
cheuelure, elle manioit ses os les vns apres les autres, auec la mesme
affection que si elle luy eust voulu rendre la vie; elle luy mit aupres
de luy son Atsatone8ai, c'est à dire son pacquet de buchettes de
Conseil, qui sont tous les liures et papiers du Païs. Pour ses petits
enfans, elle leur mit des brasselets de Pourcelaine et de rassade aux
bras, et baigna leurs os de ses larmes; on ne l'en pouuoit quasi
separer, mais on pressoit, et il fallut incontinent partir."--Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 134.
During these harangues, other functionaries were lining the grave
throughout with rich robes of beaver-skin. Three large copper kettles
were next placed in the middle, [6] and then ensued a scene of hideous
confusion. The bodies which had been left entire were brought to the
edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at the bottom by ten
or twelve Indians stationed there for the purpose, amid the wildest
excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices. [7] When this
part of the work was done, night was fast closing in. The concourse
bivouacked around the clearing, and lighted their camp-fires under the
brows of the forest which hedged in the scene of the dismal solemnity.
Brébeuf and his companions withdrew to the village, where, an hour
before dawn, they were roused by a clamor which might have wakened the
dead. One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold, had
chanced to fall into the grave. This accident had precipitated the
closing act, and perhaps increased its frenzy. Guided by the unearthly
din, and the broad glare of flames fed with heaps of fat pine logs, the
priests soon reached the spot, and saw what seemed, in their eyes, an
image of Hell. All around blazed countless fires, and the air resounded
with discordant outcries. [8] The naked multitude, on, under, and around
the scaffold, were flinging the remains of their dead, discharged from
their envelopments of skins, pell-mell into the pit, where Brébeuf
discerned men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them, arranged the
bones in their places with long poles. All was soon over; earth, logs,
and stones were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided into a
funereal chant,--so dreary and lugubrious, that it seemed to the Jesuits
the wail of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition. [9]
[6] In some of these graves, recently discovered, five or six large
copper kettles have been found, in a position corresponding with the
account of Brébeuf. In one, there were no less than twenty-six kettles.
[7] "Iamais rien ne m'a mieux figuré la confusion qui est parmy les
damnez. Vous eussiez veu décharger de tous costez des corps à demy
pourris, et de tous costez on entendoit vn horrible tintamarre de voix
confuses de personnes qui parloient et ne s'entendoient pas."--Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 135.
[8] "Approchans, nous vismes tout à fait une image de l'Enfer: cette
grande place estoit toute remplie de feux & de flammes, & l'air
retentissoit de toutes parts des voix confuses de ces Barbares,"
etc.--Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 209 (Cramoisy).
[9] "Se mirent à chanter, mais d'un ton si lamentable & si lugubre,
qu'il nous representoit l'horrible tristesse & l'abysme du desespoir
dans lequel sont plongées pour iamais ces âmes malheureuses."--Ibid.,
210.
For other descriptions of these rites, see Charlevoix, Bressani, Du
Creux, and especially Lafitau, in whose work they are illustrated with
engravings. In one form or another, they were widely prevalent. Bartram
found them among the Floridian tribes. Traces of a similar practice have
been observed in recent times among the Dacotahs. Remains of places of
sepulture, evidently of kindred origin, have been found in Tennessee,
Missouri, Kentucky, and Ohio. Many have been discovered in several parts
of New York, especially near the River Niagara. (See Squier, Aboriginal
Monuments of New York.) This was the eastern extremity of the ancient
territory of the Neuters. One of these deposits is said to have
contained the bones of several thousand individuals. There is a large
mound on Tonawanda Island, said by the modern Senecas to be a Neuter
burial-place. (See Marshall, Historical Sketches of the Niagara
Frontier, 8.) In Canada West, they are found throughout the region once
occupied by the Neuters, and are frequent in the Huron district.
Dr. Taché writes to me,--"I have inspected sixteen bone-pits," (in the
Huron country,) "the situation of which is indicated on the little
pencil map I send you. They contain from six hundred to twelve hundred
skeletons each, of both sexes and all ages, all mixed together
purposely. With one exception, these pits also contain pipes of stone or
clay, small earthen pots, shells, and wampum wrought of these shells,
copper ornaments, beads of glass, and other trinkets. Some pits
contained articles of copper of aboriginal Mexican fabric."
This remarkable fact, together with the frequent occurrence in these
graves of large conch-shells, of which wampum was made, and which could
have been procured only from the Gulf of Mexico, or some part of the
southern coast of the United States, proves the extent of the relations
of traffic by which certain articles were passed from tribe to tribe
over a vast region. The transmission of pipes from the famous Red
Pipe-Stone Quarry of the St. Peter's to tribes more than a thousand
miles distant is an analogous modern instance, though much less
remarkable.
The Taché Museum, at the Laval University of Quebec, contains a large
collection of remains from these graves. In one instance, the human
bones are of a size that may be called gigantic.
In nearly every case, the Huron graves contain articles of use or
ornament of European workmanship. From this it may be inferred, that the
nation itself, or its practice of inhumation, does not date back to a
period long before the arrival of the French.
The Northern Algonquins had also a solemn Feast of the Dead; but it was
widely different from that of the Hurons.--See the very curious account
of it by Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1642, 94, 95.
Such was the origin of one of those strange sepulchres which are the
wonder and perplexity of the modern settler in the abandoned forests of
the Hurons.
The priests were soon to witness another and a more terrible rite, yet
one in which they found a consolation, since it signalized the saving of
a soul,--the snatching from perdition of one of that dreaded race, into
whose very midst they hoped, with devoted daring, to bear hereafter the
cross of salvation. A band of Huron warriors had surprised a small party
of Iroquois, killed several, and captured the rest. One of the prisoners
was led in triumph to a village where the priests then were. He had
suffered greatly; his hands, especially, were frightfully lacerated.
Now, however, he was received with every mark of kindness. "Take
courage," said a chief, addressing him; "you are among friends." The
best food was prepared for him, and his captors vied with each other in
offices of good-will. [10] He had been given, according to Indian
custom, to a warrior who had lost a near relative in battle, and the
captive was supposed to be adopted in place of the slain. His actual
doom was, however, not for a moment in doubt. The Huron received him
affectionately, and, having seated him in his lodge, addressed him in a
tone of extreme kindness. "My nephew, when I heard that you were coming,
I was very glad, thinking that you would remain with me to take the
place of him I have lost. But now that I see your condition, and your
hands crushed and torn so that you will never use them, I change my
mind. Therefore take courage, and prepare to die tonight like a brave
man."
[10] This pretended kindness in the treatment of a prisoner destined to
the torture was not exceptional. The Hurons sometimes even supplied
their intended victim with a temporary wife.
The prisoner coolly asked what should be the manner of his death.
"By fire," was the reply.
"It is well," returned the Iroquois.
Meanwhile, the sister of the slain Huron, in whose place the prisoner
was to have been adopted, brought him a dish of food, and, her eyes
flowing with tears, placed it before him with an air of the utmost
tenderness; while, at the same time, the warrior brought him a pipe,
wiped the sweat from his brow, and fanned him with a fan of feathers.
About noon he gave his farewell feast, after the custom of those who
knew themselves to be at the point of death. All were welcome to this
strange banquet; and when the company were gathered, the host addressed
them in a loud, firm voice: "My brothers, I am about to die. Do your
worst to me. I do not fear torture or death." Some of those present
seemed to have visitings of real compassion; and a woman asked the
priests if it would be wrong to kill him, and thus save him from the
fire.
The Jesuits had from the first lost no opportunity of accosting him;
while he, grateful for a genuine kindness amid the cruel hypocrisy that
surrounded him, gave them an attentive ear, till at length, satisfied
with his answers, they baptized him. His eternal bliss secure, all else
was as nothing; and they awaited the issue with some degree of
composure.
A crowd had gathered from all the surrounding towns, and after nightfall
the presiding chief harangued them, exhorting them to act their parts
well in the approaching sacrifice, since they would be looked upon by
the Sun and the God of War. [11] It is needless to dwell on the scene
that ensued. It took place in the lodge of the great war-chief, Atsan.
Eleven fires blazed on the ground, along the middle of this capacious
dwelling. The platforms on each side were closely packed with
spectators; and, betwixt these and the fires, the younger warriors stood
in lines, each bearing lighted pine-knots or rolls of birch-bark. The
heat, the smoke, the glare of flames, the wild yells, contorted visages,
and furious gestures of these human devils, as their victim, goaded by
their torches, bounded through the fires again and again, from end to
end of the house, transfixed the priests with horror. But when, as day
dawned, the last spark of life had fled, they consoled themselves with
the faith that the tortured wretch had found his rest at last in
Paradise. [12]
[11] Areskoui (see Introduction). He was often regarded as identical
with the Sun. The semi-sacrificial character of the torture in this case
is also shown by the injunction, "que pour ceste nuict on n'allast point
folastrer dans les bois."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 114.
[12] Le Mercier's long and minute account of the torture of this
prisoner is too revolting to be dwelt upon. One of the most atrocious
features of the scene was the alternation of raillery and ironical
compliment which attended it throughout, as well as the pains taken to
preserve life and consciousness in the victim as long as possible.
Portions of his flesh were afterwards devoured.