Tooker] ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE HURON 131 



going on, two round sticks, each 1 foot long and not quite as thick as 

 an arm, were thrown from the top of the bier. One on one side was 

 for the young men, the other for the girls. [Perhaps, sometimes only- 

 one stick, for the boys, was used (cf. JR 10 : 271).] A prize of some 

 robes or some hatchets that had been set aside for the youth were 

 offered to the person who could take the stick away : was able to lift 

 it in the air in his hands. In the game which followed, the youths 

 in a body fell on the one who had been given the stick by the chief, and 

 much violence ensued in attempts to snatch it from one another's hands. 

 It sometimes lasted an hour ( JR 10 : 269-271 ; S 207-208) .^^ 



During the entire ceremony, the mother or wife of the deceased man 

 was at the foot of the grave calling to the dead man with singing or 

 frequently complaining in a lugubrious voice (JR 10: 271). 



Not all bodies were put into the tomb raised on four posts. A few 

 bodies were buried in the ground, and over them a hut or shrine of 

 bark was built (C 160-161; S 208). Around it was erected a hedge 

 of stakes fixed in the ground, out of honor for the dead and to pro- 

 tect the burial house from dogs and wild animals (S208).^° If fire 

 broke out in the village and in the cemetery, the fire in the cemetery 

 was extinguished first ( JR 39 : 31 ; S 209) . 



The Huron were lavish in providing the dead with the proper 

 clothing and the guests with gifts and food. Much time and effort 

 were directed to this end ( JR 10 : 265 ; 23 : 31) . The Jesuits had seen 

 several strip themselves of almost all their possessions by giving 

 presents to the souls of several of their dead friends (JR 8: 121; cf. 

 S 213). Gifts were also given to console a person; he did not con- 

 sider himself comforted if he was given nothing but words (JR 

 14:27). 



*» The distribution of the property of the deceased to relatives and friends and to those 

 who helped during the wake, funeral, and 10-day feast, now occurs during the 10-day 

 feast (see note 53, p. 133). Those who attend this ceremony usually contribute food 

 for this feast (Shimony 1961 a: 247-250; Fenton 1953: 8). This method of distri- 

 bution may be relatively recent. Jackson (1830 b : 30) records that the Iroquois said 

 formerly when a distinguished man died, his possessions were not buried with him but 

 kept for a year or more. Then at a council they were held up and those present told 

 they were the goods of the deceased chief. Then any young man who wished could 

 come forward and snatch the object away. In this fashion, the goods were distributed. 

 Perhaps another comparable Iroquois custom is that of snatching cakes held up by some 

 marchers as part of the 'ohglwc ceremony (Fenton and Kurath 1951: 152). It also is 

 possible that the game now played at the wake (Shimony 1961 a: 238-240) was once 

 used to distribute the possessions of the deceased. 



^The Iroquois also practiced scaffold burial (Morgan 1901(1): 166-167; Shimony 

 1961 a : 241) although now burial is interment in a grave, in a coffin. Beauchamp (1905 : 

 116-117) thought that Morgan's statement, that the Iroquois had scaffold burial, referred 

 to the Huron and to Huron influence on the Seneca. It also is said that Iroquois practice 

 used to be to abandon the corpse in the house (Fenton 1946 : 118 n. ; Morgan 1901(1) : 167) 

 or in a shack (Shimony 1961 a : 241) or small bark house made for that purpose (Morgan 

 1901(1) : 167 ; cf. also Curtin and Hewitt 1918 : 458-460). 



The use of the stockade around graves also seems to be older Iroquois practice (Bean- 

 champ 1905: 117-118). Jackson (1830 b: 27) mentions that each grave had a separate 

 covering of boards or clefts of wood. 



