JOURNAL OF FATHER CHARLEVOIX.
143
a single palisade. They have given this intrenchment the name of a fort.
Several little hills rise above this hill, and when we have passed
nishes all the men they wish, and receives payment, without giving any part to those unfortunate individuals, who are not permitted even to complain.!? One of the principal articles of their religion, and particularly for the servants of the great chief, is that of honoring his funeral rites by dying with him, that they may go and serve him in the other world. In their blindness they willingly submit to this law, in the foolish belief, that in the train of their chief they will go to enjoy the greatest happiness.
To give an idea of this bloody ceremony, it is necessary to know that as soon as an heir presumptive has been born to the great chief, each family that has an infant at the breast is obliged to pay him homage. From all these infants they choose a certain number whom they destine for the service of the young prince, and as soon as they are of a competent age, they furnish them with employments suited to their talents. Some pass their lives in hunting, or in fishing, to furnish supplies for the table ; others are employed in agriculture, while others serve to fill up his retinue. If he happens to die, all these servants sacrifice themselves, with joy, to follow their dear master. They first put on all their finery, and repair to the place opposite to the temple, where all the people are assembled. After having danced and sung a sufficiently long time, they pass around their neck a cord of buffalo hair with a running knot, and immediately the ministers appointed for executions of this kind, come forward to strangle them, recommending them to go and rejoin their master, and to render to him in the other world services even more honorable than those which had occupied them in this.
The principal servants of the great chief having been strangled in this way, they strip the flesh off their bones, particularly those of their arms and thighs, and leave them to dry for two months in a kind of tomb, after which they take them out to be shut up in the baskets, which are placed in the temple by the side of the bones of their master. As for the other servants, their relatives carry them home with them, and bury them with their arms and clothes.
The same ceremony is observed in like manner on the death of the brothers and sisters of the great chief. The women arc always strangled to follow the latter, except when they have infants at the breast, in which case they continue to live, for the purpose of nourishing them. And we often see many who endeavor to find nurses, or who themselves strangle their infants, so that they shall not lose the right of sacrificing themselves in the public place, according to the ordinary ceremonies, and as the law prescribes.
Their government is hereditary; it is not, however, the son of the reigning chief that succeeds his father, but the son of his sister, or the first princess of the blood. This policy is founded on the knowledge they have of the licentiousness of their females. They arc net sure, they say, that the children of the chief's wife may be of the royal blood, whereas the son of the sister of the great chief must be, at least on the side of the mother.
The princesses of the blood never espouse any but men of obscure family, and they have but one husband, but they have the right of dismissing him whenever it pleases them, and of choosing another among those of the nation,
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