one.
In the corner of my eye I see a woman who’s stayed near me for the last while. It’s Gosling. I turn away, but it’s too late.
“I was wondering when you were going to notice me,” she says.
I’m forced to look at her. “What is happening?” I ask.
“You’re nothing if not direct,” Gosling says. “The Kettle has begun. The Feast of the Dead has arrived. Now that they move their great village to a new place, they must invite their dead to come along with them. They can’t leave the okis of their loved ones, just as we can’t do that to the ones we love who still live.” She looks over at me, and I glance back at her. “This isn’t the tradition of my people,” she says, “but those Wendat who decide on such matters allow me to bear witness.”
We stay quiet for a long time as we walk high on the cliff overlooking the green-and-blue water below us, the waves rolling in and sending up spray when they hit the rocks. Finally, I ask Gosling to tell me more.
“Maybe if you just watch what happens over the next days,” she says. “I could tell you what I have seen but that never truly lives up to the real thing, now, does it?”
FEAST OF THE DEAD
I share this with you, my dear Superior, and with any other readers my journals might find back in France, the most splendid thing I’ve yet to see in this heathen land. It is called the Feast of the Dead, and from what I’m told it happens every twelve years or so when the whole village must pick up and move to a new location once the fields around it have become exhausted.
While the moving of a community of two thousand or more souls is nothing short of a feat to witness, it’s the community’s ceremony, its reverence for its dead, that truly astounds me. As I have seen with my own eyes, it unfolds over the course of ten days. And it includes not just the one large village of the Attignawantan, the People of the Bear who are my hosts, but also the smaller villages that are of their nation. All these communities descend upon their respective cemeteries and unearth their deceased from the tombs in which they lie. Each family sees to its dead with such bereavement and care, their tears falling like raindrops, that one would assume the corpse had lately passed on. While this is sometimes the case, more often it is not, and the bodies are in various stages of decomposition. Some are simply bones, others have only a type of parchment over their bones, and other bodies appear as if they’ve been dried and smoked, showing little sign of putrefaction. Still others, the recently departed, crawl with worms.
Once the bodies have been unearthed, they are put on display so all the family members might grieve anew, and it’s this that strikes meas especially powerful, this willingness of the sauvages to gaze down upon what they each will one day become. There’s something in this particular practice that can teach us Christians a powerful lesson, that we may see more vividly our own wretched mortal state, that it’s not this world we should cherish but the promise of the next. Yet this is only the beginning of the ceremony.
Once all the families have had sufficient time to see and to mourn over the bodies of their loved ones again, they then cover them with magnificent beaver robes. And when this stage of the mourning comes to a close, the families once again uncover the bodies and set to work stripping off the flesh and skin that might still be left, taking special care to burn this in the fire, along with any old furs and mats used in the original burial. Those bodies that have not yet putrefied enough are covered by a robe and left on a bark mat.
Now, it may seem barbaric and ghastly to hear of this practice of picking bones clean, but I must tell you, dear Superior, that I have never witnessed such absolute and pure love for a relative who has passed. One young mother cried so much as she cradled and cleaned her dead baby that her tears bathed the
In the corner of my eye I see a woman who’s stayed near me for the last while. It’s Gosling. I turn away, but it’s too late.
“I was wondering when you were going to notice me,” she says.
I’m forced to look at her. “What is happening?” I ask.
“You’re nothing if not direct,” Gosling says. “The Kettle has begun. The Feast of the Dead has arrived. Now that they move their great village to a new place, they must invite their dead to come along with them. They can’t leave the okis of their loved ones, just as we can’t do that to the ones we love who still live.” She looks over at me, and I glance back at her. “This isn’t the tradition of my people,” she says, “but those Wendat who decide on such matters allow me to bear witness.”
We stay quiet for a long time as we walk high on the cliff overlooking the green-and-blue water below us, the waves rolling in and sending up spray when they hit the rocks. Finally, I ask Gosling to tell me more.
“Maybe if you just watch what happens over the next days,” she says. “I could tell you what I have seen but that never truly lives up to the real thing, now, does it?”
FEAST OF THE DEAD
I share this with you, my dear Superior, and with any other readers my journals might find back in France, the most splendid thing I’ve yet to see in this heathen land. It is called the Feast of the Dead, and from what I’m told it happens every twelve years or so when the whole village must pick up and move to a new location once the fields around it have become exhausted.
While the moving of a community of two thousand or more souls is nothing short of a feat to witness, it’s the community’s ceremony, its reverence for its dead, that truly astounds me. As I have seen with my own eyes, it unfolds over the course of ten days. And it includes not just the one large village of the Attignawantan, the People of the Bear who are my hosts, but also the smaller villages that are of their nation. All these communities descend upon their respective cemeteries and unearth their deceased from the tombs in which they lie. Each family sees to its dead with such bereavement and care, their tears falling like raindrops, that one would assume the corpse had lately passed on. While this is sometimes the case, more often it is not, and the bodies are in various stages of decomposition. Some are simply bones, others have only a type of parchment over their bones, and other bodies appear as if they’ve been dried and smoked, showing little sign of putrefaction. Still others, the recently departed, crawl with worms.
Once the bodies have been unearthed, they are put on display so all the family members might grieve anew, and it’s this that strikes meas especially powerful, this willingness of the sauvages to gaze down upon what they each will one day become. There’s something in this particular practice that can teach us Christians a powerful lesson, that we may see more vividly our own wretched mortal state, that it’s not this world we should cherish but the promise of the next. Yet this is only the beginning of the ceremony.
Once all the families have had sufficient time to see and to mourn over the bodies of their loved ones again, they then cover them with magnificent beaver robes. And when this stage of the mourning comes to a close, the families once again uncover the bodies and set to work stripping off the flesh and skin that might still be left, taking special care to burn this in the fire, along with any old furs and mats used in the original burial. Those bodies that have not yet putrefied enough are covered by a robe and left on a bark mat.
Now, it may seem barbaric and ghastly to hear of this practice of picking bones clean, but I must tell you, dear Superior, that I have never witnessed such absolute and pure love for a relative who has passed. One young mother cried so much as she cradled and cleaned her dead baby that her tears bathed the
Similar Books
