Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlvi. (1902), No. 13. 21 



The reasons given by the Hurons for this Feast of 

 the Dead were : — 



1. That it helped to assuage the general grief 



2. That it entertained friends from a distance. 



3. That the ghosts of the dead were pleased by the 



liberality shown and also b)' the food, in which 

 they had their share. 



For further illustration of these feasts of the dead I 

 may refer to Dr. Tylor's Primitive Culture. The 

 practice of re- burial and of these feasts is very widely 

 spread amongst savage tribes. The re-burial takes place 

 at different intervals of time, usually at the end of one 

 year from the time of the first burial. The first burial is 

 not the final burial. The soul of the dead, as we saw 

 previously, is driven out of the dwelling-hut with sticks. 

 The body is buried in the village cemetery. The ghost 

 or soul of the dead does not go away to the great village 

 of the dead in the west. It hangs about the cemetery and 

 the village until the second burial at the Feast of the Dead. 



To turn to West Africa. We are told that in Calabar 

 the body of the dead is buried within a few days. The 

 burial of the soul, however — the really important matter — 

 does not take place for perhaps a year, because it is an 

 expensive matter, and therefore, the survivors have to 

 wait till they can afford it. The fees for getting it done 

 properly are heavy, and meanwhile the ghost is still about. 



I have used the words soul, ghost, spirit indifferently. 

 It is difficult to understand from the words used by 

 savages exactly what their conceptions are. The words 

 used, as the savages often know themselves, are figurative 

 and inexact. Many a traveller has carried away as a sort 

 of joke the story that natives think their shadows are 

 their souls, because they use the word for shadow as a 

 description of the soul. As a rule, such a traveller could 



