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[Vol.
never fail them. Another of the hosts will do the same for other dancers, who will be invited to come to his house, and see how his people treat [their guests] -until all those of the [entertaining] village have in turn given feasts of this sort. During [these] three days they lavish all that they possess in trade-goods or other articles; and they reduce themselves to such an extreme of poverty that they do not even reserve for themselves a single hatchet or knife. Very often they keep back for their own use only one old kettle; and the sole object for which they incur all this expenditure is, that they may render the souls of the departed more happy and more highly respected in the country of the dead. For the savages believe that they are under the strictest obligation to perform, in the honors which they pay to their dead, all that I have related, and that it is only this sort of lavish spending which can fully secure rest for the departed souls; for it is the custom among those people to give whatever they possess, without reservation, in the ceremonies of funerals or of other superstitions. There are still some of those savages who have sucked the milk of religion, who nevertheless have not wholly laid aside ideas of this sort, and who bury with the corpse whatever belonged to the person during his life. Solemnities of this kind for the dead were formerly celebrated every year, each tribe being alternately hosts and guests; but for several years past this has been no longer the custom, except among some few [villages]. The Frenchmen who have gone among them have made them realize that these useless extravagances of theirs were ruining their families, and reducing them to a lack of even the necessities of life/6
66 Regarding the great feast of the dead, among not only the Hurons but the upper Algonquins, cf. Champlain, Voyages, 303, 304; the Relations of 1636 (chap, ix) and of 1643 (chap, xii); La Potherie, Histoire, vol. ii, 47; Lafitau,