It isn’t that simple, but this night, and now this morning, is the time to listen and for me to bite my tongue.
They all take turns speaking again, revived despite the sun threatening. It’s Ata who finally says it. “Their message is clear. They’ve travelled far into our country, early in the year, and will stand behind what they threaten if she isn’t returned. Is she worth it?”
Again they all speak, each in his or her turn. Even Yenrish doesn’t argue. Aronhia, the oldest man, looks to me when all are done and speaks just as a baby in a nearby longhouse wakes with morning cries of hunger. “We should consider,” he says, “what is most sensible not just for the one but for the community.” He reaches his stick into the coals and turns it. The tip burns the colour of a cranberry, then bursts into flame. When he stretches and slowly stands up, we all do the same.
—
I RUB THE SHORT NUB of stick against a carved-out piece of cedar, twisting it to mimic a turkey hen. Snow Falls kneels beside me, watching intently, as is her nature. The sound of the wood on wood as I twist my hand warbles like a bird who needs a mate, and the fresh scratchings of a male a short arrow flight from where we huddle is what has kept me here in this clearing since before daybreak. I’m surprised the girl joined me when I asked, out of courtesy, if she’d like to come.
She still hasn’t said more than a few sentences in these last weeks, and I refuse to let her know she’s winning this battle, that she’s wearing me down. I twist the nub again and the call of the female echoes out from the cedar in my hand. I then place the wood beside my bow, an arrow already notched into place.
As I had hoped, the yawp of a male calls out from just inside the tree line across from us. His call is deep and the hunger for a mate is obvious in it. I pick up the cedar and stick and call out once more to tempt him out of cover. Then, as slow as I’m able, I pick up my bow. All I hear for a few moments is the gentle breath of the girl, now quickening some. I draw back and stare down the length of the arrow to where he will come.
A big male emerges, hesitant and alert. Despite what his instinct tells him, I know that his desire will get the most of him. He only needs to come halfway into the clearing and I’ll have my shot. He puffs his chest and calls out again. As good as his meat will be, it’s his feathers I need most. They are the only ones I will use for my fletching, and I plan on making many arrows for the summer journey.
He scratches at the ground and bobs his head, trying to entice the female he thinks is close by. Both confused and curious, he takes a few more steps, then thinks better of it and begins to retreat to where he came from. That’s when an even larger male pops out from the bush, opening his wings wide to intimidate the other. I’ve never seen a turkey so large. He gobbles out coarsely as he approaches the other male, who makes only the slightest of challenges before scurrying off in the other direction, clucking in anger.
The huge bird, with the clearing all to himself, steps out in the middle and yawps once more for the female that he, too, had heard. He puffs out so big that I picture shouldering him back into the long-house to proudly show off to Fox. The fletching this bird will provide! My arm, tiring now, holds steady, and my fingers on the string hum for release. My aim is centred on the bird’s chest, such a large target that I know I can’t miss.
Just as I let go, I feel the girl’s hand push my arm. I watch the arrow shoot hard to the left of the bird and thunk and splinter on a tree across the clearing. Quick as I can, I reach for another arrow and notch it, drawing back just in time to see the bird scuttle into the bush. I slowly release the tension on the bow and let the arrow drop.
When I stand, my knees shake. I fight the urge to slap her. I bend down and pick up my possessions, then start to walk away. Then I stop and turn. The girl stares at me dully. She smiles, but there’s no light in it.
“In a few days, we will begin the move to a new village,” I say, “and we’ll leave this place, my home. It isn’t your home. It can’t ever be.” I pause and search for the words. I want to tell her I’ve decided to trade her for peace. I want to tell her that along with her, I’ll bring my most sacred possession as a gift, that I’ll carry wampum from the Wendat people, crafted and sewn into one of the greatest story belts I’ve ever seen, that this is what I’ve been given to do. But all that comes out of my mouth is, “After the village is moved, I will paddle you to the designated place, and I will return you to your people.”
I expect her to smile, but instead something like sadness flashes in her eyes.
THE KETTLE HAS BEGUN
I watch for days, for weeks, the preparations for what will take these Wendat, my people’s enemy, beyond the summer to accomplish. I’m glad Bird will return me to my family. This village slowly pulls itself apart and is carried on the backs of the women and men and children to its new location a day’s walk from here. It’s difficult work, brutal work, but I won’t have to help these ones much longer. Soon, I’ll be carried in Bird’s canoe to the land of my people, and there I’ll be given back to them and hopefully be avenged.
He and Fox and the men of their longhouse focus on the construction of their new home, and I’m impressed by how quickly it’s going up. Tomorrow before dawn we’ll walk back to the old village and gather more of our possessions only to turn around the morning after that and drag them here. Some men dig holes and place the palisades while others build their new homes. By the looks of it, this village will be as large as the last one, maybe bigger. I work hard at remembering all the little details, anything that might help my father’s war-bearers when they come to destroy it. I look for the entrances and the weaknesses in the palisades, and where the most important longhouses are. Bird won’t send me away without paying for it.
He and the others who will be going on the voyage work especially hard, up before dawn and still building and chopping and dragging until well after dark. They need to do much before heading off, but instead of being short-tempered and exhausted, they seem very content, even happy. Maybe it’s because of the new location that’s been chosen, which I have to admit is beautiful. A river runs beside it into the Sweet Water Sea, and already fields are being carved out of the thick forest. There will be much firewood for a long time, and I can tell this place will be plentiful with deer and moose and smaller game.
This morning, as we leave the new village and head back to the old one, Bird and Fox stop at a large pit that’s being dug. I wonder what it is. Men are already busy building scaffolding beside it.
“Word has gone out to all the other villages?” Fox asks.
Bird nods. “They’re preparing the fire for the Kettle. I’ve been waiting for this day since I lost them.”
“It might bring you a bit of peace,” Fox says.
Instead of answering, Bird walks down the path and into the forest, the rest of us following.
—
EARLY SUMMER ARRIVES, and there is still much work to be done, I can see, but the old fields will grow through one last summer to supplement these new ones. I wake up hoping this day will be the day we leave. People seem anxious. They’re planning some kind of ceremony, but no one speaks of it out loud and I’m too mad at Bird to ask him.
Men continue to dig the pit and it’s now almost as long as a long-house and as deep as one is high. The scaffold around it seems to be finished. Ladders go up to it, and so it must be some sort of stage. I hope to see whatever it is that’s coming.
When I walk back to the new longhouse, Bird and Fox are wearing their tobacco pouches and each carries a small sack of ottet. They’re clearly about to travel somewhere. Bird looks at me and actually smiles. “We have something important to do these next days,” he says. He’s about to walk out with Fox but then turns back to me. “The whole of our village is involved, and so if you’d like to join us, you are welcome to.”
I shake my head. For a tiny moment it looks like he’s been hurt by my response. He turns and walks with Fox out of the longhouse. I watch them from the doorway
and, once they’re far enough away, I follow.
All day long, so many people use the path that leads to the old village that I don’t even have to hide from Bird. Clearly, there’s one last important thing to do in that place. The day is warm and the light pours down through the trees as we near the Sweet Water Sea. I feel something I’ve never felt as I walk along with a greater number than I’ve ever walked with before, few of them even talking, just the sound of so many feet and so many people breathing. I feel like part of this group. When we break out of the forest and onto the trail on the cliffs above the great sparkling water, I tell myself that I’m not part of them. I’m not. But still, I want to know what it is that I’m now a part of. I want to know why we’re walking back to the old village as 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 me as 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 infant’s bones. None showed any sign of repugnance at all as they removed the flesh from their relatives, and it is in this duty to the dead that all Christians might learn another valuable lesson. After undergoing such an obligation, what act of charity might seem remotely comparable? To look after the sick in hospital, to bow to and clean the feet of a sick man covered in sores, these would seem simple indeed.
After two or three days of mourning in their home, the families place the now clean bones of the dead into beautiful bags sewn of beaver fur and decorated with beads. Hoisting the bones onto their backs, the families place yet another beautiful robe onto their packages and leave their longhouses to begin the trek as one great community from their old village to the new one, families of other smaller communities meeting with them along the way in a display of timing that is startling. Like sparrows descending onto a mighty oak for an evening’s rest, thousands of these sauvages congregate in and around the new village, and residents and visitors alike enter their own longhouses or the longhouses of their hosts, where each family makes a feast to its dead.
I have learned from one captain of the confederation that these Huron believe a body has two souls, or okis. One soul is more attached to the body and will stay with it in the cemetery, watching over it for eternity, unless someone bears it again as a child. When I asked the captain why he thought such a thing, he pointed out to me, as proof of this soul transferring from one body to another, the amazing resemblance some people have to a deceased person. Oh, these poor and simple heathens.
According to him, the second oki leaves the body and makes a harrowing journey to a “village of souls” that is very similar to those of the living. Travelling along the southern shore of what the Huron call the Sweet Water Sea, they must pass by a cliff painted with ancient animals, some human in form, others part man, part beast, and still others frightening sea creatures.
Beyond this, a malevolent spirit called Pierce Head draws out the brains of the departed, who then must cross over a river on an unsteady tree trunk guarded by a dog that will leap at them and frighten many off the log and into the wicked current below. God, give me the courage and resolve to enlighten those who walk in darkness.
But back to the ceremony at hand, dear Superior. Once all have arrived at the new village and have mourned for three days, the people carry the bags of bones, or spirit bags, to the largest cabins of their clans and put them on display, along with gifts for the dead that include beaded necklaces and kettles and robes. Another feast is held in each of these longhouses, and the songs of the deceased are sung as family members mingle and mourn. The guests are allowed to help themselves to any food they desire and even to take some home with them, which is typically forbidden. As they finally leave, they sing out as loud as they can, “Haeey! Haeey!” in order to appease and to comfort their dead relations in the spirit bags. It is truly something to hear, as frightening as wolves calling out to one another in the moonlight.
As the next couple of days pass, the mood changes to one of excitement as people of the different communities play games for prizes. With my own eyes I’ve seen women shooting their bows at distant targets, every bit as talented as any of the men as they try to win quill-work belts or necklaces or strings of beads. The young men battle one another in ferocious scrums to keep hold of a baton, while others throw spears to compete for axes and knives and beaver robes. These people are truly physical, as sleek and fit as any race I’ve ever encountered.
But then the mood changes
to solemnity again. On the preor-dained day, families go to where their dead are displayed and once more unwrap them to say one last goodbye, the longhouses smelling a little stronger than musk. Tears flow anew, and it is startling to watch as women comb the hair of freshly dead relatives and mothers place beaded bracelets on the bones of their children and grown warriors cradle what is left of their wives. And then as one, each family stands, forms a line, and carries the remains of their loved ones to the pit that has been dug outside the palisades.
Let me describe this burial place. It is about the size of the inner courtyard at Versailles, and in the middle of it a pit has been dug at least two fathoms deep by fifteen fathoms wide. Around the circumference of the pit is an intricate and sturdy scaffold at least two fathoms high, with cross poles where the Huron, according to clan, will soon hang their bundles of souls. The bodies that remain whole, covered by their beaver robes, surround the burial pit underneath the scaffold, stretched out on their bark mats and fastened to stakes at about a fathom, or the height of a man. I’m told that they will go in first.
But before the spirit bags are hung on the scaffold, the sauvages, according to clan and village, lay their parcels of souls upon the ground, essentially once again putting them on display for curious visitors to stroll by and admire as if they are perusing wares at a village fair. For a distance of some three thousand feet these bags are laid out, poles planted beside them so that presents brought for the living may also go on display. All manner of beaver robes and quillwork belts and beaded necklaces and skinning knives and amulets are strung on these poles for everyone to see. I believe that the families and clans compete with one another to try and prove who has the most wealth. The spirit bags and gifts remain on display for several hours, as several thousand people have descended upon the new village to partake of the proceedings.