600 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



That which extends outside is red. It is accompanied on each side with a 

 string of white flowers. 



Those who prepare this conveyance are the first and the oldest warriors of 

 the nation. They place it on the shoulders of the 8 who are the only ones to 

 take it out of the village. In this way there remain only 16 of them there, 

 because all the others have gone, a little after sunrise, with their great chief 

 [of war] and those who command the warriors under his orders. He disperses 

 (hem a hundred paces apart and places 8 in each relay. For this purpose he 

 chooses those of his warriors who are the strongest and the most vigorous. 

 The others wait at the open space with him to receive the Great Sun. 



These dispositions made and the warriors' post having been reddened and 

 planted by itself in the middle of the space, with ceremony (for the great 

 war chief has to hold it while the warriors make it firm), the Great Sun, when 

 the sun is a quarter of the way up, goes forth from his cabin adorned with 

 his diadem and the other ornaments which indicate his dignity. On the instant, 

 the warriors who have remained to carry him utter many redoubled cries and 

 with so much strength that those who hear them may be assured that these 

 men are not consumptives. As the warriors of the relays are not more than 

 a hundred paces apart, they hear the first cries and repeat them on the spot, 

 so that in a minute they are informed at the square, although it is half a league 

 distant. 



The Great Sun seats himself in the litter, adorned with the ornaments 

 suitable to the supreme rank, for good sense alone has enabled these people 

 to know that these ornaments are the marks of sovereignty, and in the cere- 

 monies their princes always wear them, if not all, at least a part. Then the 

 8 oldest warriors place him in this state on the shoulders of those who are 

 going to carry him. The cries are continued from the time of his departure 

 from his cabin until he is beyond the village. At most this is a matter of 

 two minutes. Those who carry him and those who receive him do it with so 

 much quickness and skill that a good horse would be able to follow them 

 only at a canter, for those who await him at each relay lift him from the 

 shoulders of those who arrive with so much agility that he does not stop at 

 all and does not cease to go with the same rapidity, so that that journey, I 

 believe, lasts only six or seven minutes at most. (I^e Page du Pratz, 175S, 

 vol 2, pp. 363-381; Swanton, 1911, p. 114.) 



Dumont de Montigny says that the road over which the Sun was 

 to be carried was cleaned of grass 8 days before the ceremony which 

 he was to attend. 



The day of this feast having arrived the savages stretched a beautiful bison 

 skin, daubed and painted with different colors, on a kind of litter, covered with 

 a fine cloth in the manner of a cradle, and on this litter they laid their great 

 chief who on that day was dressed in the French manner but without shoes. 

 This ceremony was gone through to the noise of many guns which the savages 

 discharged from time to time. Afterward all being ranged in a column of a 

 width of four or five men they raised the cradle in which was their chief 

 upon their heads and passing him from hand to hand from the great village 

 to the place where the tun ["tun"=granary] was, they made him cover this entire 

 route in the air much more quickly than our Frenchmen could do it, although they 

 were very well mounted, since he was more than a quarter of an hour before them 

 at this rustic camp where he had himself held in the air until they arrived. 

 If by mischance in its course the litter had fallen to the earth it would have 



