i636.] DISINTERMENT. 73 



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 tw^elve years. 

 The priests, connoisseurs ui 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 re- 

 claimed 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;^ and 

 to this notion, very general among Indians, is in 

 no small degree due that extravagant attachment 

 to the remains of then' dead, which may be said to 

 mark the race. 



These relics of mortality, together with the re- 

 cent corpses, — which were allowed to remain en- 

 tire, but which were also wrapped carefully in furs, 

 -wfere 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 ; 



1 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 



7 



