The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century | Page 9

and other
valuable furs were sometimes, on such occasions, used as a substitute. ]
The belts, on occasions of importance, were wrought into significant
devices, suggestive of the substance of the compact or speech, and
designed as aids to memory. To one or more old men of the nation was
assigned the honorable, but very onerous, charge of keepers of the
wampum,--in other words, of the national records; and it was for them

to remember and interpret the meaning of the belts. The figures on
wampum-belts were, for the most part, simply mnemonic. So also were
those carved on wooden tablets, or painted on bark and skin, to
preserve in memory the songs of war, hunting, or magic. [ Engravings
of many specimens of these figured songs are given in the voluminous
reports on the condition of the Indians, published by Government,
under the editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft. The specimens are chiefly
Algonquin. ] The Hurons had, however, in common with other tribes, a
system of rude pictures and arbitrary signs, by which they could convey
to each other, with tolerable precision, information touching the
ordinary subjects of Indian interest.
Their dress was chiefly of skins, cured with smoke after the
well-known Indian mode. That of the women, according to the Jesuits,
was more modest than that "of our most pious ladies of France." The
young girls on festal occasions must be excepted from this
commendation, as they wore merely a kilt from the waist to the knee,
besides the wampum decorations of the breast and arms. Their long
black hair, gathered behind the neck, was decorated with disks of native
copper, or gay pendants made in France, and now occasionally
unearthed in numbers from their graves. The men, in summer, were
nearly naked,--those of a kindred tribe wholly so, with the sole
exception of their moccasins. In winter they were clad in tunics and
leggins of skin, and at all seasons, on occasions of ceremony, were
wrapped from head to foot in robes of beaver or otter furs, sometimes
of the greatest value. On the inner side, these robes were decorated with
painted figures and devices, or embroidered with the dyed quills of the
Canada hedgehog. In this art of embroidery, however, the Hurons were
equalled or surpassed by some of the Algonquin tribes. They wore their
hair after a variety of grotesque and startling fashions. With some, it
was loose on one side, and tight braided on the other; with others, close
shaved, leaving one or more long and cherished locks; while, with
others again, it bristled in a ridge across the crown, like the back of a
hyena. [ See Le Jeune, Relation, 1638, 35.--"Quelles hures!" exclaimed
some astonished Frenchman. Hence the name, Hurons. ] When in full
dress, they were painted with ochre, white clay, soot, and the red juice
of certain berries. They practised tattooing, sometimes covering the
whole body with indelible devices. [ Bressani, Relation Abrégée, 72.

--Champlain has a picture of a warrior thus tattooed. ] When of such
extent, the process was very severe; and though no murmur escaped the
sufferer, he sometimes died from its effects.
Female life among the Hurons had no bright side. It was a youth of
license, an age of drudgery. Despite an organization which, while it
perhaps made them less sensible of pain, certainly made them less
susceptible of passion, than the higher races of men, the Hurons were
notoriously dissolute, far exceeding in this respect the wandering and
starving Algonquins. [ 1 ] Marriage existed among them, and polygamy
was exceptional; but divorce took place at the will or caprice of either
party. A practice also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage,
lasting a day, a week, or more. The seal of the compact was merely the
acceptance of a gift of wampum made by the suitor to the object of his
desire or his whim. These gifts were never returned on the dissolution
of the connection; and as an attractive and enterprising damsel might,
and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final
establishment, she thus collected a wealth of wampum with which to
adorn herself for the village dances. [ 2 ] This provisional matrimony
was no bar to a license boundless and apparently universal, unattended
with loss of reputation on either side. Every instinct of native delicacy
quickly vanished under the influence of Huron domestic life; eight or
ten families, and often more, crowded into one undivided house, where
privacy was impossible, and where strangers were free to enter at all
hours of the day or night.
[ 1 Among the Iroquois there were more favorable features in the
condition of women. The matrons had often a considerable influence on
the decisions of the councils. Lafitau, whose book appeared in 1724,
says that