SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, OCTOBER 9, U 



BURIAL CUSTOMS OF THE HURONS.' 



The region to which I desire to carry my audience is one 

 full of historic interest, made doubly so from the fact that 

 Parkman has so frequently referred to this part of North 

 America in his valuable writings, and also from the fact that 

 the early Jesuits first commenced their missionary labors in 

 this district No matter how one may view or in what light 

 one may regard the work which the Jesuits had undertaken 

 in Christianizing the aborigines, we cannot but adnnire their 

 great zeal, endurance, and indomitable courage; and stu- 

 dents in quest of knowledare concerning the traits of the In- 

 dians are deeply indebted to these missionaries for their keen 

 observations and copious notes, which gave us such an in- 

 sight into the aboriginal manners and customs. The Huron 

 Indians inhabited what is now known as the County of Sim- 

 coe, in the Province of Ontario, Canada, situated between 

 two large bodies of water: on the north lies the Georgian 

 Bay, with its 80,000 islands, and on the south the clear crys- 

 tal waters of Lake Simcoe. The locality was in every way 

 an ideal one for an aboriginal site. The country was well 

 wooded, game was plentiful, large and small lakes abounded, 

 which not only gave a plentiful supply of pure water, but 

 were also full of fish, while small streams flowed in various 

 directions. With such favorable surroundings it is not sur- 

 prising that the Hurons bad remained in the same locality 

 for centuries, and had it not beeu for their implacable foes, 

 the Iroquois, they might possibly be there yet. But in 1649 

 their dreaded enemy descended upon them and slaughtered 

 Indian and Jesuit alike, and the few who escaped sought 

 refuge in the islands of Georgian Bay, from whence shortly 

 afterwards they removed to Lorette, near Quebec, where the 

 remnants of that once great tribe can be now found and are 

 known by the name of Wyandots. The County of Simcoe 

 has proved a most prolific field for the archaeologist to work 

 in, and for fifteen years I have devoted much time to the 

 examination of earthworks and to the collecting of relics. I 

 have secured some four thousand objects in stone, shell, 

 bone, pottery, and copper. Many of the specimens deserve 

 to be ranked amongst the finest of the so-called Neolithic 

 period. As reports of the various forts and earthworks 

 which I have surveyed have appeared frequently in public 

 print, I shajl not now refer to them; I desire simply to make 

 a few remarks on the burial customs of the Hurons. 



Their places of sepulture are of three kinds, — the ossua- 

 ries (or depositories of human bones), single graves, and 

 mounds. The ossuaries contain the remains of from a few 

 to several thousand bodies, and it is principally in these that 

 specimens are found. I might say that I opened one of 

 these large pits in South Orillia township and dug through 

 human bones nearly ten feet deep. In order to account for 

 the interment in such large numbers in one spot, it is neces- 

 sary to explain the custom which resulted in such a practice. 



1 Notes of a paper read before the American Association for the Advancr- 

 ment of Science, at Washington, by Charles A. Hirschfelder, U. S. Vice Consul, 

 Toronto, Canada. 



The "Feast of the Dead" was one of the Indians' most 

 solemn and religious rites; when an Indian died, it was the 

 custom from time to time to erect a rough stage, place 

 the body on top, and every eight or ten years collect 

 the remains so placed, scrape the flesh from the recent dead, 

 and bury them in one large hole. The functionaries on 

 whom the duty of scraping devolved were denominated 

 "bone-pickers." As the bodies were cast in promiscuously, 

 it is very difficult to find perfect crania among the bones so 

 deposited. From thirty of these ossuaries I have only suc- 

 ceeded in securing about forty perfect ones. One skull was 

 particularly interesting from the fact that it had been broken 

 through in three separate places, and yet the Indian had 

 lived for years, apparently, as the wounds were completely 

 healed. When one has seen an ossuary it is easy to recog- 

 nize them whenever one may find them, owing to the circular 

 depression of the surface, which is traceable to the decay of 

 the bones. One singular circumstance in connection with 

 these ossuaries is worthy of mention, and it is that they 

 either contain many relics or are entirely devoid of them. 



With regard to the single graves, of which I have opened 

 some 350, I do not suppose there were more than fifty which 

 contained anything but human bones. In certain cases the 

 bodies were in a sitting posture, but usually they were not 

 placed in any particular position. The sepulchral mounds 

 in the United States are usually very large, but the Huron 

 mounds are only three to four feet high and about sixty feet 

 in circumference, and of no regular shape. These contain 

 from six to twelve bodies, placed some two feet apart; differ- 

 ences in the shape of the crania are observable in many of 

 these sepuchral places. This might be accounted for by the 

 practice of attaching prisoners of war to the several tribes, 

 and also by that of occasionally uniting the remains of a 

 shattered tribe with a tribe that had conquered. There is 

 certainly a difference in crania which have been found in 

 the same locality, so that if we were to find the brachyceph- 

 alic and the dolichocephalic types under the same mound we 

 should in this way be able to account for such an occurrence. 

 Besides, intermarriage among members of the same clan was 

 forbidden by some tribes, so that if a member of the Turtle 

 Clan aspired to the paternity of a Romulus or Remus it be- 

 hooved him to seek the affections of a lady from some other 

 clan than his own. In a pamphlet sent me by its author, 

 Mr. Luciea Carr of the Peabody Museum, Boston, Mr. Carr 

 gives the mean measurement of sixty-seven crania taken 

 from stone graves in Tennessee: he found five dolichoceph- 

 alic, eighteen orthocephalic, twenty-nine brachycephalic, and 

 fifteen much flattened. Mr. Carr observes that the measure- 

 ment of the above mentioned crania (exclusively of the flat- 

 tened heads) indicates that they belong to the two extremes 

 of classification. The measurements of Mr. Carr correspond 

 with my own experience, for I have observed a considerable 

 diversity in the crania of the ossuaries, mounds, and single 

 graves. The dolichocephalic type is characteristic of the 

 eastern tribes. Crania which have undergone compression 

 when young have a conformation which is as manifest in- 

 ternally as it is by the exterior. It is by many believed that 

 the burial of articles with the dead was a religious act, but 



