dreaded by many of the Hurons, who, however, were never known to decline
them.

Invitation to a dance was no less concise than to a feast. Sometimes a
crier proclaimed the approaching festivity through the village. The
house was crowded. Old men, old women, and children thronged the
platforms, or clung to the poles which supported the sides and roof.
Fires were raked out, and the earthen floor cleared. Two chiefs sang at
the top of their voices, keeping time to their song with tortoise-shell
rattles. [ 1 ] The men danced with great violence and gesticulation;
the women, with a much more measured action. The former were nearly
divested of clothing,--in mystical dances, sometimes wholly so; and,
from a superstitious motive, this was now and then the case with the women.
Both, however, were abundantly decorated with paint, oil, beads, wampum,
trinkets, and feathers.

[ 1 Sagard gives specimens of their songs. In both dances and feasts
there was no little variety. These were sometimes combined. It is
impossible, in brief space, to indicate more than their general features.
In the famous "war-dance,"--which was frequently danced, as it still is,
for amusement,--speeches, exhortations, jests, personal satire, and
repartee were commonly introduced as a part of the performance, sometimes
by way of patriotic stimulus, sometimes for amusement. The music in this
case was the drum and the war-song. Some of the other dances were also
interspersed with speeches and sharp witticisms, always taken in good
part, though Lafitau says that he has seen the victim so pitilessly
bantered that he was forced to hide his head in his blanket. ]

Religious festivals, councils, the entertainment of an envoy, the
inauguration of a chief, were all occasions of festivity, in which social