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
Brebeuf, 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.