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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

F >> Francis Parkman >> The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century




[ 1 "Suffit pour le present de dire en general, que iamais les
Bacchantes forcenées du temps passé ne firent rien de plus furieux en
leurs orgyes. C'est icy à s'entretuer, disent-ils, par des sorts qu'ils
s'entreiettent, dont la composition est d'ongles d'Ours, de dents de Loup,
d'ergots d'Aigles, de certaines pierres et de nerfs de Chien; c'est à
rendre du sang par la bouche et par les narines, ou plustost d'vne poudre
rouge qu'ils prennent subtilement, estans tombez sous le sort, et
blessez; et dix mille autres sottises que ie laisse volontiers."--Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 117. ]

But all these ceremonies were outdone by the grand festival of the
_Ononhara_, or Dream Feast,--esteemed the most powerful remedy in cases of
sickness, or when a village was infested with evil spirits. The time and
manner of holding it were determined at a solemn council. This scene of
madness began at night. Men, women, and children, all pretending to have
lost their senses, rushed shrieking and howling from house to house,
upsetting everything in their way, throwing firebrands, beating those
they met or drenching them with water, and availing themselves of this
time of license to take a safe revenge on any who had ever offended them.
This scene of frenzy continued till daybreak. No corner of the village
was secure from the maniac crew. In the morning there was a change.
They ran from house to house, accosting the inmates by name, and
demanding of each the satisfaction of some secret want, revealed to the
pretended madman in a dream, but of the nature of which he gave no hint
whatever. The person addressed thereupon threw to him at random any
article at hand, as a hatchet, a kettle, or a pipe; and the applicant
continued his rounds till the desired gift was hit upon, when he gave an
outcry of delight, echoed by gratulatory cries from all present. If,
after all his efforts, he failed in obtaining the object of his dream,
he fell into a deep dejection, convinced that some disaster was in store
for him.

[ Brébeuf's account of the Dream Feast is brief. The above particulars
are drawn chiefly from Charlevoix, Journal Historique, 356, and Sagard,
Voyage du Pays des Hurons, 280. See also Lafitau, and other early
writers. This ceremony was not confined to the Hurons, but prevailed
also among the Iroquois, and doubtless other kindred tribes. The Jesuit
Dablon saw it in perfection at Onondaga. It usually took place in
February, occupying about three days, and was often attended with great
indecencies. The word ononhara means turning of the brain. ]

The approach of summer brought with it a comparative peace. Many of the
villagers dispersed,--some to their fishing, some to expeditions of trade,
and some to distant lodges by their detached corn-fields. The priests
availed themselves of the respite to engage in those exercises of private
devotion which the rule of St. Ignatius enjoins. About midsummer,
however, their quiet was suddenly broken. The crops were withering under
a severe drought, a calamity which the sandy nature of the soil made
doubly serious. The sorcerers put forth their utmost power, and, from
the tops of the houses, yelled incessant invocations to the spirits.
All was in vain; the pitiless sky was cloudless. There was thunder in
the east and thunder in the west; but over Ihonatiria all was serene.
A renowned "rain-maker," seeing his reputation tottering under his
repeated failures, bethought him of accusing the Jesuits, and gave out
that the red color of the cross which stood before their house scared the
bird of thunder, and caused him to fly another way. [ 1 ] On this a
clamor arose. The popular ire turned against the priests, and the
obnoxious cross was condemned to be hewn down. Aghast at the threatened
sacrilege, they attempted to reason away the storm, assuring the crowd
that the lightning was not a bird, but certain hot and fiery exhalations,
which, being imprisoned, darted this way and that, trying to escape.
As this philosophy failed to convince the hearers, the missionaries
changed their line of defence.

[ 1 The following is the account of the nature of thunder, given to
Brébeuf on a former occasion by another sorcerer.

"It is a man in the form of a turkey-cock. The sky is his palace,
and he remains in it when the air is clear. When the clouds begin to
grumble, he descends to the earth to gather up snakes, and other objects
which the Indians call _okies_. The lightning flashes whenever he opens
or closes his wings. If the storm is more violent than usual, it is
because his young are with him, and aiding in the noise as well as they
can."--Relation des Hurons, 1636, 114.

The word oki is here used to denote any object endued with supernatural
power. A belief similar to the above exists to this day among the
Dacotahs. Some of the Hurons and Iroquois, however, held that the
thunder was a giant in human form. According to one story, he vomited
from time to time a number of snakes, which, falling to the earth,
caused the appearance of lightning. ]

"You say that the red color of the cross frightens the bird of thunder.
Then paint the cross white, and see if the thunder will come."

This was accordingly done; but the clouds still kept aloof. The Jesuits
followed up their advantage.

"Your spirits cannot help you, and your sorcerers have deceived you with
lies. Now ask the aid of Him who made the world, and perhaps He will
listen to your prayers." And they added, that, if the Indians would
renounce their sins and obey the true God, they would make a procession
daily to implore his favor towards them.

There was no want of promises. The processions were begun, as were also
nine masses to St. Joseph; and, as heavy rains occurred soon after,
the Indians conceived a high idea of the efficacy of the French
"medicine."

[ "Nous deuons aussi beaucoup au glorieux sainct Ioseph, espoux de Nostre
Dame, et protecteur des Hurons, dont nous auons touché au doigt
l'assistance plusieurs fois. Ce fut vne chose remarquable, que le iour
de sa feste et durant l'Octaue, les commoditez nous venoient de toutes
parts."--Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1635, 41.

The above extract is given as one out of many illustrations of the
confidence with which the priests rested on the actual and direct aid of
their celestial guardians. To St. Joseph, in particular, they find no
words for their gratitude. ]

In spite of the hostility of the sorcerers, and the transient commotion
raised by the red cross, the Jesuits had gained the confidence and
good-will of the Huron population. Their patience, their kindness,
their intrepidity, their manifest disinterestedness, the blamelessness of
their lives, and the tact which, in the utmost fervors of their zeal,
never failed them, had won the hearts of these wayward savages; and
chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would make their abode
with them. [ Brébeuf preserves a speech made to him by one of these
chiefs, as a specimen of Huron eloquence.--Relation des Hurons, 1636,
123. ] As yet, the results of the mission had been faint and few; but
the priests toiled on courageously, high in hope that an abundant harvest
of souls would one day reward their labors.




CHAPTER VII.

1636, 1637.

THE FEAST OF THE DEAD.


HURON GRAVES.--PREPARATION FOR THE CEREMONY.--DISINTERMENT.--
THE MOURNING.--THE FUNERAL MARCH.--THE GREAT SEPULCHRE.--
FUNERAL GAMES.--ENCAMPMENT OF THE MOURNERS.--GIFTS.--HARANGUES.--
FRENZY OF THE CROWD.--THE CLOSING SCENE.--ANOTHER RITE.--
THE CAPTIVE IROQUOIS.--THE SACRIFICE.


Mention has been made of those great depositories of human bones found at
the present day in the ancient country of the Hurons. [ See
Introduction. ] They have been a theme of abundant speculation; [ 1 ]
yet their origin is a subject, not of conjecture, but of historic
certainty. The peculiar rites to which they owe their existence were
first described at length by Brébeuf, who, in the summer of the year 1636,
saw them at the town of Ossossané.

[ 1 Among those who have wondered and speculated over these remains is
Mr. Schoolcraft. A slight acquaintance with the early writers would have
solved his doubts. ]

The Jesuits had long been familiar with the ordinary rites of sepulture
among the Hurons; the corpse placed in a crouching posture in the midst
of the circle of friends and relatives; the long, measured wail of the
mourners; the speeches in praise of the dead, and consolation to the
living; the funeral feast; the gifts at the place of burial; the funeral
games, where the young men of the village contended for prizes; and the
long period of mourning to those next of kin. The body was usually laid
on a scaffold, or, more rarely, in the earth. This, however, was not its
final resting-place. At intervals of ten or twelve years, each of the
four nations which composed the Huron Confederacy gathered together its
dead, and conveyed them all to a common place of sepulture. Here was
celebrated the great "Feast of the Dead,"--in the eyes of the Hurons,
their most solemn and important ceremonial.

In the spring of 1636, the chiefs and elders of the Nation of the
Bear--the principal nation of the Confederacy, and that to which
Ihonatiria belonged--assembled in a general council, to prepare for the
great solemnity. There was an unwonted spirit of dissension. Some
causes of jealousy had arisen, and three or four of the Bear villages
announced their intention of holding their Feast of the Dead apart from
the rest. As such a procedure was thought abhorrent to every sense of
propriety and duty, the announcement excited an intense feeling; yet
Brébeuf, who was present, describes the debate which ensued as perfectly
calm, and wholly free from personal abuse or recrimination. The
secession, however, took place, and each party withdrew to its villages
to gather and prepare its dead.

The corpses were lowered from their scaffolds, and lifted from their
graves. Their coverings were removed by certain functionaries appointed
for the office, and the hideous relics arranged in a row, surrounded by
the weeping, shrieking, howling concourse. The spectacle was frightful.
Here were all the village dead of the last twelve years. The priests,
connoisseurs in such matters, regarded it as a display of mortality so
edifying, that they hastened to summon their French attendants to
contemplate and profit by it. Each family reclaimed its own, and
immediately addressed itself to removing what remained of flesh from the
bones. These, after being tenderly caressed, with tears and lamentations,
were wrapped in skins and adorned with pendent robes of fur. In the
belief of the mourners, they were sentient and conscious. A soul was
thought still to reside in them; [ 1 ] and to this notion, very general
among Indians, is in no small degree due that extravagant attachment to
the remains of their dead, which may be said to mark the race.

[ 1 In the general belief, the soul took flight after the great ceremony
was ended. Many thought that there were two souls, one remaining with
the bones, while the other went to the land of spirits. ]

These relics of mortality, together with the recent corpses,--which were
allowed to remain entire, but which were also wrapped carefully in
furs,--were now carried to one of the largest houses, and hung to the
numerous cross-poles, which, like rafters, supported the roof. Here the
concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral feast; and, as the
squaws of the household distributed the food, a chief harangued the
assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased, and extolling their
virtues. This solemnity over, the mourners began their march for
Ossossané, the scene of the final rite. The bodies remaining entire were
borne on a kind of litter, while the bundles of bones were slung at the
shoulders of the relatives, like fagots. Thus the procession slowly
defiled along the forest pathways, with which the country of the Hurons
was everywhere intersected; and as they passed beneath the dull shadow of
the pines, they uttered at intervals, in unison, a dreary, wailing cry,
designed to imitate the voices of disembodied souls winging their way to
the land of spirits, and believed to have an effect peculiarly soothing
to the conscious relics which each man bore. When, at night, they
stopped to rest at some village on the way, the inhabitants came forth to
welcome them with a grave and mournful hospitality.

From every town of the Nation of the Bear,--except the rebellious few
that had seceded,--processions like this were converging towards
Ossossané. This chief town of the Hurons stood on the eastern margin of
Nottawassaga Bay, encompassed with a gloomy wilderness of fir and pine.
Thither, on the urgent invitation of the chiefs, the Jesuits repaired.
The capacious bark houses were filled to overflowing, and the surrounding
woods gleamed with camp-fires: for the processions of mourners were fast
arriving, and the throng was swelled by invited guests of other tribes.
Funeral games were in progress, the young men and women practising
archery and other exercises, for prizes offered by the mourners in the
name of their dead relatives. [ Funeral games were not confined to the
Hurons and Iroquois: Perrot mentions having seen them among the Ottawas.
An illustrated description of them will be found in Lafitau. ] Some of
the chiefs conducted Brébeuf and his companions to the place prepared for
the ceremony. It was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in extent.
In the midst was a pit, about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide.
Around it was reared a high and strong scaffolding; and on this were
planted numerous upright poles, with cross-poles extended between,
for hanging the funeral gifts and the remains of the dead.

Meanwhile there was a long delay. The Jesuits were lodged in a house
where more than a hundred of these bundles of mortality were hanging from
the rafters. Some were mere shapeless rolls; others were made up into
clumsy effigies, adorned with feathers, beads, and belts of dyed
porcupine-quills. Amidst this throng of the living and the dead, the
priests spent a night which the imagination and the senses conspired to
render almost insupportable.

At length the officiating chiefs gave the word to prepare for the
ceremony. The relics were taken down, opened for the last time, and the
bones caressed and fondled by the women amid paroxysms of lamentation.
[ 1 ] Then all the processions were formed anew, and, each bearing its
dead, moved towards the area prepared for the last solemn rites. As they
reached the ground, they defiled in order, each to a spot assigned to it,
on the outer limits of the clearing. Here the bearers of the dead laid
their bundles on the ground, while those who carried the funeral gifts
outspread and displayed them for the admiration of the beholders.
Their number was immense, and their value relatively very great. Among
them were many robes of beaver and other rich furs, collected and
preserved for years, with a view to this festival. Fires were now
lighted, kettles slung, and, around the entire circle of the clearing,
the scene was like a fair or caravansary. This continued till three
o'clock in the afternoon, when the gifts were repacked, and the bones
shouldered afresh. Suddenly, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd ran
forward from every side towards the scaffold, like soldiers to the
assault of a town, scaled it by rude ladders with which it was furnished,
and hung their relics and their gifts to the forest of poles which
surmounted it. Then the ladders were removed; and a number of chiefs,
standing on the scaffold, harangued the crowd below, praising the dead,
and extolling the gifts, which the relatives of the departed now bestowed,
in their names, upon their surviving friends.

[ 1 "I'admiray la tendresse d'vne femme enuers son pere et ses enfans;
elle est fille d'vn Capitaine, qui est mort fort âgé, et a esté autrefois
fort considerable dans le Païs: elle luy peignoit sa cheuelure, elle
manioit ses os les vns apres les autres, auec la mesme affection que si
elle luy eust voulu rendre la vie; elle luy mit aupres de luy son
Atsatone8ai, c'est à dire son pacquet de buchettes de Conseil, qui sont
tous les liures et papiers du Païs. Pour ses petits enfans, elle leur
mit des brasselets de Pourcelaine et de rassade aux bras, et baigna leurs
os de ses larmes; on ne l'en pouuoit quasi separer, mais on pressoit,
et il fallut incontinent partir."--Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636,
134. ]

During these harangues, other functionaries were lining the grave
throughout with rich robes of beaver-skin. Three large copper kettles
were next placed in the middle, [ 1 ] and then ensued a scene of hideous
confusion. The bodies which had been left entire were brought to the
edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at the bottom by ten
or twelve Indians stationed there for the purpose, amid the wildest
excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices. [ 2 ] When
this part of the work was done, night was fast closing in. The concourse
bivouacked around the clearing, and lighted their camp-fires under the
brows of the forest which hedged in the scene of the dismal solemnity.
Brébeuf and his companions withdrew to the village, where, an hour before
dawn, they were roused by a clamor which might have wakened the dead.
One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold, had chanced
to fall into the grave. This accident had precipitated the closing act,
and perhaps increased its frenzy. Guided by the unearthly din, and the
broad glare of flames fed with heaps of fat pine logs, the priests soon
reached the spot, and saw what seemed, in their eyes, an image of Hell.
All around blazed countless fires, and the air resounded with discordant
outcries. [ 3 ] The naked multitude, on, under, and around the scaffold,
were flinging the remains of their dead, discharged from their
envelopments of skins, pell-mell into the pit, where Brébeuf discerned
men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them, arranged the bones in
their places with long poles. All was soon over; earth, logs, and stones
were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided into a funereal
chant,--so dreary and lugubrious, that it seemed to the Jesuits the wail
of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition. [ 4 ]

[ 1 In some of these graves, recently discovered, five or six large
copper kettles have been found, in a position corresponding with the
account of Brébeuf. In one, there were no less than twenty-six kettles. ]

[ 2 "Iamais rien ce m'a mieux figuré la confusion qui est parmy les
damnez. Vous eussiez veu décharger de tous costez des corps à demy
pourris, et de tous costez on entendoit vn horrible tintamarre de voix
confuses de personnes qui parloient et ne s'entendoient pas."--Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 135. ]

[ 3 "Approchans, nous vismes tout à fait une image de l'Enfer: cette
grande place estoit toute remplie de feux & de flammes, & l'air
retentissoit de toutes parts des voix confuses de ces Barbares,"
etc.--Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 209 (Cramoisy). ]

[ 4 "Se mirent à chanter, mais d'un ton si lamentable & si lugubre,
qu'il nous representoit l'horrible tristesse & l'abysme du desespoir dans
lequel sont plongées pour iamais ces âmes malheureuses."--Ibid., 210.

For other descriptions of these rites, see Charlevoix, Bressani, Du Creux,
and especially Lafitau, in whose work they are illustrated with
engravings. In one form or another, they were widely prevalent. Bartram
found them among the Floridian tribes. Traces of a similar practice have
been observed in recent times among the Dacotahs. Remains of places of
sepulture, evidently of kindred origin, have been found in Tennessee,
Missouri, Kentucky, and Ohio. Many have been discovered in several parts
of New York, especially near the River Niagara. (See Squier, Aboriginal
Monuments of New York.) This was the eastern extremity of the ancient
territory of the Neuters. One of these deposits is said to have
contained the bones of several thousand individuals. There is a large
mound on Tonawanda Island, said by the modern Senecas to be a Neuter
burial-place. (See Marshall, Historical Sketches of the Niagara Frontier,
8.) In Canada West, they are found throughout the region once occupied
by the Neuters, and are frequent in the Huron district.

Dr. Taché writes to me,--"I have inspected sixteen bone-pits," (in the
Huron country,) "the situation of which is indicated on the little pencil
map I send you. They contain from six hundred to twelve hundred
skeletons each, of both sexes and all ages, all mixed together purposely.
With one exception, these pits also contain pipes of stone or clay,
small earthen pots, shells, and wampum wrought of these shells, copper
ornaments, beads of glass, and other trinkets. Some pits contained
articles of copper of aboriginal Mexican fabric."

This remarkable fact, together with the frequent occurrence in these
graves of large conch-shells, of which wampum was made, and which could
have been procured only from the Gulf of Mexico, or some part of the
southern coast of the United States, proves the extent of the relations
of traffic by which certain articles were passed from tribe to tribe over
a vast region. The transmission of pipes from the famous Red Pipe-Stone
Quarry of the St. Peter's to tribes more than a thousand miles distant is
an analogous modern instance, though much less remarkable.

The Taché Museum, at the Laval University of Quebec, contains a large
collection of remains from these graves. In one instance, the human
bones are of a size that may be called gigantic.

In nearly every case, the Huron graves contain articles of use or
ornament of European workmanship. From this it may be inferred, that the
nation itself, or its practice of inhumation, does not date back to a
period long before the arrival of the French.

The Northern Algonquins had also a solemn Feast of the Dead; but it was
widely different from that of the Hurons.--See the very curious account
of it by Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1642, 94, 95. ]

Such was the origin of one of those strange sepulchres which are the
wonder and perplexity of the modern settler in the abandoned forests of
the Hurons.

The priests were soon to witness another and a more terrible rite,
yet one in which they found a consolation, since it signalized the saving
of a soul,--the snatching from perdition of one of that dreaded race,
into whose very midst they hoped, with devoted daring, to bear hereafter
the cross of salvation. A band of Huron warriors had surprised a small
party of Iroquois, killed several, and captured the rest. One of the
prisoners was led in triumph to a village where the priests then were.
He had suffered greatly; his hands, especially, were frightfully
lacerated. Now, however, he was received with every mark of kindness.
"Take courage," said a chief, addressing him; "you are among friends."
The best food was prepared for him, and his captors vied with each other
in offices of good-will. [ This pretended kindness in the treatment of a
prisoner destined to the torture was not exceptional. The Hurons
sometimes even supplied their intended victim with a temporary wife. ]
He had been given, according to Indian custom, to a warrior who had lost
a near relative in battle, and the captive was supposed to be adopted in
place of the slain. His actual doom was, however, not for a moment in
doubt. The Huron received him affectionately, and, having seated him in
his lodge, addressed him in a tone of extreme kindness. "My nephew,
when I heard that you were coming, I was very glad, thinking that you
would remain with me to take the place of him I have lost. But now that
I see your condition, and your hands crushed and torn so that you will
never use them, I change my mind. Therefore take courage, and prepare to
die tonight like a brave man."

The prisoner coolly asked what should be the manner of his death.

"By fire," was the reply.

"It is well," returned the Iroquois.

Meanwhile, the sister of the slain Huron, in whose place the prisoner was
to have been adopted, brought him a dish of food, and, her eyes flowing
with tears, placed it before him with an air of the utmost tenderness;
while, at the same time, the warrior brought him a pipe, wiped the sweat
from his brow, and fanned him with a fan of feathers.

About noon he gave his farewell feast, after the custom of those who knew
themselves to be at the point of death. All were welcome to this strange
banquet; and when the company were gathered, the host addressed them in a
loud, firm voice: "My brothers, I am about to die. Do your worst to me.
I do not fear torture or death." Some of those present seemed to have
visitings of real compassion; and a woman asked the priests if it would
be wrong to kill him, and thus save him from the fire.

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