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 Brebeuf 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