96 The Ottawa Naturalist. [August 



archaeology, the Jesuits and other contemporary writers have 

 told us much that is invaluable concerning this important 

 festival. 



Reverence for their dead was a marked characteristic of the 

 Huron people, a sentiment that was common among all the red 

 races. It is doubtful if those refinements of Christian feeling 

 that find expression in the mortuary rites of our civilized white 

 races, are one whit more profound than those outpourings of 

 sorrow, which were lavished by the Hurons upon the remains 

 of their departed relatives, at their periodical Feasts of the Dead. 



When the early settlers, in western Ontario, were clearing 

 up their lands, they were frequently puzzled at the discovery 

 of large pits filled with human bones, together with warlike and 

 domestic implements and articles of personal adornment, all 

 crowded together in these communal sepulchres. These bone- 

 pits or ossuaries were at first attributed to burials for the disposal 

 of the slain after great battles, or of those who had perished 

 during epidemics of disease. Their true origin, however, was 

 established beyond conjecture by the Jesuit Relations. 



Par km an, in the Jesuits in North America, has given us 

 graphic details of what the Hurons considered their most solemn 

 and important ceremonial. It was witnessed by Brebeuf at 

 Ossossan^, in the summer of 1636, and a report of it embodied 

 in his Relation of the same year. The following brief description 

 of the solemnity, compiled from the works of these writers, may 

 answer our purpose, without going into details. 



Every ten years, or so, each of the four nations of the Huron 

 confederacy held a Feast of the Dead. The time and place, at 

 which the feast should be held, was decided by the chiefs of the 

 nation, in solemn council. All preliminary arrangements having 

 been made, the dead of the past decade were collected from far 

 and near and conveyed to the common rendezvous. Previously 

 however, the corpses which had, as usual, been placed on scaffolds 

 or, more rarely, in the earth, for the time being, were removed 

 from their temporary resting places and prepared V>y loving 

 relatives for the final rite of sepulture. The bones of such as 

 were reduced to skeletons were tied up in bundles like faggots, 

 wrapped in skins and clothed with pendant robes of costly furs. 

 The bodies of the more recent dead were allowed to remain entire 

 and were clothed also in furs. Then these ghastly bundles of 

 mortality were hung on the cross-poles, which later on sustained 

 the corn harvest, of the principal long-house in the village, and, 

 while the mourners partook of a funeral feast, the chiefs dis- 

 coursed upon the public or domestic virtues of the deceased. Then 

 commenced the wierd funeral march along the woodland paths 



