The hunting
of Birds and of Fishes, as well by day as by night; and the ceremony of their
Burial, with that which was customary when they were committed to the earth.
They had
still another kind of hunting by night, and one rather interesting. In certain
closed coves which are under cover from the wind, the Wild Geese, the Brant,
and the Ducks go to sleep out upon the surface, for on land they would not be
safe because of the Foxes. To those places the Indians went, two or three in a
canoe, with torches which they made of Birch bark; these burn more brightly
than torches of wax. Reaching the place where all these birds are, they laid
down in the canoe, which they allowed to drift without their being seen. The current
carried them right into the midst of all these birds, which had no fear of
them, supposing them, to be logs of wood which the sea
was
carrying from one place to another,
something that often happens, which makes them
accustomed to it. When the Indians were in their midst they
lighted their torches all at once. This surprised the birds and obliged them
all at the same moment to rise into the air. The darkness of the night makes
this light very conspicuous, so that they suppose it is the sun or other
(such) thing. They all proceeded to wheel in confusion around the torches
which an Indian held, always approaching the fire, and so close that the
Indians, with sticks they held, knocked them down as they passed. Besides, by
virtue of much wheeling about, these birds became dizzy, so that they fell as
if dead; then the Indians took them and wrung their necks. As a result in a
single night they filled their canoe.
The Indians
used these torches also for fishing the Salmon and the Salmon Trout, which is
as powerful as the Salmon. There are there two species of Salmon; one is like
that of France,
while the other has the lower jaw more pointed, with a hook at the end which
turns upwards. I believe nevertheless that it is the one which we call in France
Becars.1 They are not less good than the others. All of them
come from the sea and ascend the rivers in spring. There occur many pools in
these rivers, in which the Salmon play after having ascended, which they have
trouble in doing because of the falls which are found there. There are places
where the water falls from eight, ten, twelve, and fifteen feet in height, up
which the Salmon ascends.
They dart
into the waterfall, and with five or six strokes of the
tail they get up. It is not that there are falls in all
these rivers, but in certain ones only. After having
thus ascended, they disport themselves in these pools.
Having remained there some time they ascend again still
higher. To these places of rest the Indians went at night
with their canoes and their torches. Where the pools
are, there they carried their canoes through the woods, and launched them
where the Salmon or the Trout were.
These rarely are found together in the same pool. Being
there, they lighted a torch. The Salmon or the Trout,
seeing the fire which shines upon the water, come wheeling
around the canoe. He who is standing up has in his hand
a harpoon, which is the same as that used for Beaver,
and likewise is fixed in the end of a long shaft. So soon
as he saw a fish passing he speared at it, and rarely
missed. But sometimes the spear did not take hold, for want
of catching on some bone; thus they lost their fish. This did not prevent
them from taking a hundred and fifty to two hundred in a night.
They make use also of another device. At
the narrowest
place of the rivers, where there is the least water,
they make a fence of wood clear across the river to hinder
the passage of the fish. In the middle of it they
leave an opening in which they place a bag-net like those
used in France,
so arranged that it is inevitable the fish should run into them. These
bag-nets, which are larger than ours, they raise two or three times a day,
and they always find fish therein. It is in spring that the fish ascend, and
in autumn they descend and return to the sea. At that time they placed the
opening of their bag-net in the other direction.
All that I have said so far about the
customs of the Indians, and of their diverse ways of doing things, ought to be
understood only as the way in which they did them in old times. To this I
shall add their burials, and the ancient ceremonies of their funerals. When
some one of them died, there was great weeping in his wigwam. All his
relatives and friends went there to weep, and this lasted three or four days
without their eating. During this time there was delivered his funeral
oration. Each one spoke one after another, for they never spoke two at a time,
neither men or women. In this respect these barbarians give a fine lesson to
those people who consider themselves more polished and wiser than they. A
recital was made of all the genealogy of the dead man, of that
which
he had done fine and good, of the stories that he (the orator) had heard told
of his ancestors, of the great
feasts and acknowledgments he had made in
large number, of
the animals he had killed in the hunt, and of all the other matters they
considered it fitting to tell in praise of his predecessors. After this they
came to the dead man; then the loud cries and weepings redoubled. This made
the orator strike a pose, to which the men and women responded from time to
time by a general groaning, all at one time and in the same tone. And often he
who was
speaking struck postures, and set himself to cry and weep with the others.
Having said all that he wished to say, another began and said yet other things
than the first. Then one after another, each after his own fashion, made his
panegyric on the dead man. This lasted three or four days before the funeral
oration was finished.
After this it was necessary to make great
tabagie, that is to say festival, and to rejoice in the great gratification
the deceased will have in going to see all his ancestors, his relatives and
good friends, and in the joy that each of them will have in seeing him, and
the great feasts they will make for him. They believed that, being dead, they
went into another land where everything abounded plentifully, and where they
never had to work. The festival of joy being finished it was necessary to do
some work for the dead.
The women went to fetch fine pieces of bark
from which they made a kind of bier on which they placed him well
enwrapped. Then he was carried to a place where they had a staging built on
purpose, and elevated eight or ten feet. On this they placed the bier, and
there they left it about a year, until the time when the sun had entirely
dried the body. During that time the wives of the deceased wept every time
they met together in company, but not so long as the first time. Rarely the
women re-married, or at least not until after the end of a year. Usually if
they had children who could support them, they did not re-marry at all, and
lived always with their children in widowhood.
The end of
the year having passed, and the body (being) dry, it was taken thence and
carried to a new place, which is their cemetery. There it was placed in a new
coffin or bier, also of Birch bark, and immediately after in a deep grave which
they had made in the ground. Into this all his relatives
and friends threw bows, arrows, snow-shoes, spears, robes of Moose, Otter, and
Beaver, stockings, moccasins, and everything that was needful for him in
hunting and in clothing himself. All the friends of the deceased
made him each his present, of the finest and best that they had. They competed as to
who would make the most beautiful gift. At a time when they were not yet
disabused of their errors, I have seen them give to the dead man, guns, axes,
iron arrowheads, and kettles, for they held all these to be much more
convenient for their use than would have been their kettles of wood, their
axes of stone, and their knives of bone, for their use in the other world.
There have been dead men in my time who have taken away more
than two thousand pounds of peltries. This aroused
pity in the French, and perhaps envy with it; but
nevertheless one did not dare to go take the things, for this would have caused hatred and everlasting war,
which
it was not
prudent to risk since it would have ruined entirely the
trade we had with them. All the burials of the women,
boys, girls, and children were made in the same fashion, but
the weeping did not last so long. They never omitted to place
with each one that which was fitting for his use, nor to bury
it with him.
It has been
troublesome to disabuse them of that practice,
although they have been told that all these things perished in
the earth, and that if they would look there they would
see that nothing had gone with the dead man. That was emphasised so much that
finally they consented to open a grave, in
which they were made to see that all was decayed. There was
there among other things a kettle, all perforated with
verdigris. An Indian having struck against it and found that
it no longer sounded, began to make a great cry, and said
that some one wished to deceive them. "We see indeed," said
he, "the robes and all the rest, and if they are still
there it is a sign that the dead man has not had need of
them in the other world, where they have enough of them
because of the length of time that they have been furnished
them."
"But with
respect to the kettle," said he, "they have need of it,
since it is among us a utensil of new introduction, and with
which the other world cannot (yet) be furnished. Do you not
indeed see," said he, rapping again upon the kettle, "that it
has no longer any sound, and that it no longer says a word,
because its spirit has abandoned it to go to be of use in the
other world to the dead man to whom we have given it?"
It was indeed
difficult to keep from laughing, but much more
difficult to disabuse him. For being shown another
which was worn out from use, and being made to hear that it spoke no
word more than the other, "ha," said he, "that is because it
is dead, and its soul has gone to the land where the souls of kettles are
accustomed to go." And no other reason could be given at that time.
Nevertheless, they have been disabused of that in the end, though with much
difficulty, some by religion, (some by) the example of our own customs, and
nearly all by the need for the things which come from us, the use of which has
become to them an indispensable necessity. They have abandoned all their own
utensils, whether because of the trouble they had as well to make as to use
them, or because of the facility of obtaining from us, in exchange for skins
which cost them almost nothing, the things which seemed to them invaluable, not
so much for their novelty as for the convenience they derived therefrom. Above
everything the kettle has always seemed to them, and seems still, the most
valuable article they can obtain from us. This was rather pleasingly
exemplified by an Indian who the late-Monsieur de Razilly sent from Acadia to
Paris; for, passing by the Rue
Aubry-bouche, where there were then many coppersmiths, he asked of
his interpreter if they were not relatives of the King, and
if this was not the trade of the grandest seigniors of
the Kingdom. This little digression must not make me
forget to say here, before finishing this chapter on funerals,
that to express a thing such as it is when it can be no
longer of use, they say that it is dead. For examp1e, when their canoe is
broken, they say that it is dead, and thus with all other things out of service.
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