292 FOSSIL MEN. 



Last of all came the great octennial or decennial 

 feast of the dead, most important of all the national 

 ceremonies of the St. Lawrence tribes. Arrangements 

 were made as to the time and place, and a master 

 of the ceremonies was appointed, and friends were 

 invited from neighbouring villages. When all was 

 ready, they proceeded in procession to the cemetery, 

 disinterred and cleansed the bones, amidst the lamen- 

 tations of the women, wrapped them in new furs, and 

 then, with many ceremonies, feasts, dances, and games., 

 conveyed them to the great national pit or ossuary, 

 where they were finally interred with the richest 

 funeral gifts, and covered with the heaped-up soil. 



" Here bring the last gifts, and with them 



The last lament be said, 

 Let all that pleased and yet may please 

 Be buried with the dead." 



The arrangements of burial differed among differ- 

 ent tribes. In ancient Micmac graves, in Prince 

 , Edward Island, the bones have been found wrapped 

 in birch bark, and with a little parcel of arrow or 

 spear-heads interred with them. Some of the western 

 tribes leave the corpse and its property in its lodge, 

 which thus becomes its tomb. Some raise the bodies 

 of the dead aloft on stages, a custom which prevails 

 as far off as Papua, where the people have also long, 

 communistic houses, inhabited by many families, like 

 the Iroquois and Hurons. Some tribes buried their 

 dead in caverns; and the old Alleghans, and other 

 agricultural tribes of the west and south, erected great 



