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hold her tighter, but she disappeared and he found in his hand only a little rotten 
cedar. The shadows that had fought with him. were the shadows of dead enemies, 
probably Mohawks” (James Walker). 
Although, in the judgment of the Indians, the shadows of the dead 
seldom molested human beings, they were capable if provoked of inflicting 
terrible harm. Thus they would certainly cause the death within a few 
months of any widow or widower who made a vow never to remarry, and 
broke the vow. 
“ An Indian woman once mocked and kicked the corpse of a white man that 
floated up on the beach of Georgian bay after the wreck of a schooner. Soon after 
dark that evening she heard the sound of whistling, and knew that the shadow of the 
dead man was haunting her wigwam. Her family moved it farther along the beach; 
but the whistling continued until the woman became so hysterical that from mid- 
night until dawn she jabbered unceasingly, addressing her words to the unseen 
shadow. At dawn she died, saying with her last breath ‘ Let no' one mock or abuse 
the dead’” (Jonas King). 
In the fall of the year, at the close of the trout-fishing season when 
their camps were filled with meat, the Indians erected a large wigwam and 
celebrated their annual Festival to the Dead. The chief’s mijenoe or mes- 
senger collected contributions of food from all the lodges, and the families 
assembled inside and sat around the walls. First they threw a little food 
into the fire for the shadows of the dead relatives, gathered, as they 
believed, to receive their offerings; then joyfully they feasted and danced 
until the morning. A few days later they scattered to their winter hunting- 
grounds; but this Festival of the Dead always lingered in their memories 
as one of the happiest days in the year. 
Such, then, was the Indian’s conception of the fate of the shadow- — not 
a cheerful fate, yet not one to arouse his fears. To the soul, the most vital 
element in a human being, he attributed a happier destiny, provided that 
the deceased had not died before his time, had never been a sorcerer, and 
was given proper burial. His soul then left its earthly home as soon as the 
corpse was buried, and in one night, as most Indians believed, travelled by 
a long and perilous route to Epanggishimuk, the spirit land in the west, 
where the night of our earth was day and our day night. There it dwelt in 
happiness for ever, dancing and feasting by day in the great wigwam of 
Nanibush or of his brother Wolf. But the souls of sorcerers perished on the 
journey, though their shadows remained active around their earlier homes; 
and the souls of the unburied, and of those who had died before their time, 
could not find the right trail, but lingered on earth near their old abodes, 
hardly distinguishable from their shadows. So the Georgian Bay Ojibwa 
scrupulously buried all corpses washed up on their shores to give the souls 
passage to their rightful home. Since every soul craved company on its 
long journey and might call away the soul of a surviving relative or friend, 
the family of a man just buried suspended a thin strip of birch bark, folded 
zigzag, outside the wigwam, that its snake-like undulations in the breeze 
might frighten the soul away and send it on its journey unattended. Even 
today many a Parry Islander hangs a piece of cloth or of paper near the 
stovepipe in his kitchen for a few days following a death in the house. 
Partly owing to the mixed origin of the present-day Parry Islanders, 
partly also because there was no necessity for any fixation of the doctrinal 
