THOMAS. | BURIAL CEREMONIES OF THE HURONS. 1h, 
after these flying pieces ; but, as there is nothing so valuable this year in the country 
as tobacco (petun), he held some pieces of it in his hand, which he presented at once 
to those who were disputing over the skin, and thus acquired it for himself. 
Before leaving the place we learned that, on the evening when presents had been 
given to the foreign nations, on the part of the master of the feast, we also had been 
named; and, in fact, as we were going, Anenkhiondic came and presented a new robe 
composed of ten beaver skins, in return for the necklace which I had given them in 
the midst of the council to show them the heavenly way. They were so much obliged 
for this present that they wished to show some acknowledgment of it in so good an 
assembly. I would not accept it, however, saying to him that, as we had made them 
this present only to persuade them to embrace our faith, they could not oblige us 
more than in listening to us willingly and believing in Him who rules over all. He 
asked what I desired that he should do with the robe. I replied that he could dispose 
of it in whatever way he deemed best, with which he remained perfectly satisfied. Of 
the rest of the twelve hundred presents forty-eight robes were used to adorn the grave. 
Each body wore its robe and some of them two or three. Twenty were given to the 
master of the feast, to reward the nations who had assisted at it. A number were 
distributed on the part of the dead, through the captains, to their living friends. A 
part of them were only used for show, and were returned to those who had exhibited 
them. The old people (anciens), and great leaders of the country, who had the ad- 
ministration and management of it, privately took a great deal, and the rest were cut 
in pieces, as I have said, and scattered through the assembly. However, it was only 
the rich who lost nothing, or very little, at this feast. The mendicants and poor 
people brought and left there all they possessed of any value, and suffered much by 
striving to appear as well as others in this celebration. Every one stood upon this 
point of honor. 
Indeed, it was only by a chance that we were not also participants of the feast. 
During this winter the Captain Aenons, of whom I haye spoken before, came to nake 
us a proposal on the part of all the anciens of the country. At that time the boiling 
of the kettle (chandiere) was not yet divided. They proposed to us then that we 
should consent to exhume the remains of the two Frenchmen who had died in this 
country, to wit, Guillaume Chaudron and Estienne Bruslé, who was killed four years 
ago, and that their bones might be placed in the common grave of their dead. We 
replied at first that this could not be done; that it was forbidden; that as they had 
been baptized, and were, as we hoped, in heaven, we respected their bones too highly 
to allow them to be mixed with the bones of those who had not been baptized. 
Besides, it was not our custom to exhume the bodies of those who had been buried. 
We decided, however, after all, that as they were interred in the wood and since 
the people desired it so much, we would consent to take up their bones on the condi- 
tion that they allowed us to put them in a particular grave, with the bones of all that 
we had baptized in the country. 
Four reasons especially persuaded us to give them this final answer. First, as it is 
the greatest expression of friendship and good-will that can be shown in this country, 
we yielded to them readily in this point that which they wished, and thus showed 
that we desired to love them as brothers and to live and die with them. Second, we 
hoped that God would be glorified in it, especially, in that separating by consent of 
all the nation the bodies of the Christians from those of the unbelievers, it would 
not be difficult afterwards to obtain special permission that their Christians should 
be interred in a separate cemetery, which we would bless for that purpose. ‘Third, 
we claimed to bury them with all the rites of the Chureh. Fourth, the old men, 
of their own accord, desired us to raise there a beautiful and magnificent cross, as 
they showed us afterwards more particularly. Thus the cross would have been 
established by the authority of the whole country and honored in the midst of this 
heathenism, and they would have been careful not toimpute to it afterwards, as they 
have done in the past, all the misfortunes that befell them. 
