The Feast of the Dead
An Important Native American Custom
The Feast of the Dead was a ceremony performed among a number of Native groups of North America, particularly present-day Canada. Performed in mid-summer, seven or eight neighbouring groups would join together to celebrate the Feast of the Dead for ten days. These groups took turns hosting the Feast and participating as guests, so that each group would hold the Feast every seven or eight years. Some groups, though, like the Odawa, held the Feast every year.
Origins of the Feast of the Dead
It is difficult for us now to know with whom the Feast originated, but accounts generally agree that it likely began with the Six-Nations Iroquois. Other native groups quickly developed their own versions of the feast, seeing its potential as a tool of diplomacy. These groups include the Huron and the Odawa, both of whom altered parts of the ceremony to their own needs and preferences.
Feast of the Dead Activities
A number of activities went into the Feast of the Dead, including the giving of gifts. Gift-giving was very important to the Natives of North America, and they showed this when hosting the Feast. Jesuit accounts of witnessed Feasts tell of the host group giving away so much to their guests that they were left destitute by the end, sometimes keeping nothing but a kettle for themselves.
Other activities performed during the Feast include young people taking on the personas of dead relatives and visiting neighbours as that relative (a precursor to Halloween, it has been argued), and informal marriage ceremonies. Of course, as the name suggests, food was plentiful over the course of the get-together, so the acts of preparing and consuming the foods were important as well.
Perhaps the most important activity performed during the Feast of the Dead, though, was the burial of those who had died since the last ceremony. A significant amount of time was put into preparing the grave site for the dead, as well as preparing the bodies for burial. The family members of the deceased were responsible for ensuring that the body was cleaned and dressed in time for the ceremony.
The Feast of the Dead and the Afterlife
So why did the Natives perform the Feast of the Dead? One reason lies in their belief of the afterlife. Not only did the Natives wish to honour and remember those who had died in the past, the Huron at least also believed that the Feast of the Dead would help the souls of those who died move into the afterlife.
The Hurons believed that people had two souls; the first would stay in the grave with the body until an eligible woman walked past that it could enter and who would then give birth to the spirit in the form of a child. The second soul remained in the body and grave only until the Feast of the Dead, at which point it could safely travel to the West, or the land of the dead. Therefore, to the Hurons, at least, the Feast of the Dead was necessary for the souls of the dead to move on.
The Feast of the Dead and Alliances
The most important reason for the Feast of the Dead, though, was the creation and maintenance of alliances. New alliances were made among Native groups by inviting them to participate in the Feast of the Dead. These new alliances were formalized through the mingling of the bones of dead relatives – a very important gesture.
The exchanging of gifts at the ceremony was also very important to the creation and maintenance of allies. To pre-contact Natives, gift giving was an important way to show friendship, as it was not seen as a bribe, loan, or payment in anyway. This is the reason that the host often gave away most of their material possessions to their guests.
The marriages made during the Feast were also done with the intent of formalizing alliances, as having relatives within a different group was one of the most common ways to ensure the maintenance of alliances.
Once a new alliance was made, the natives would sometimes participate in the “dance of union” to celebrate it. However, when alliances were already present and had been for some time, those groups did not co-bury their dead, but simply maintained their alliances through the gifting, dancing, and feasting.
Once the effects of European settlement really began to be felt in North America, the Feast of the Dead was held less frequently. Today, the Feast is remembered by various Native groups who hold variant versions of it. Many also believe that the origins of Halloween can be traced to this important Native American custom.
Sources
Hickerson, Harold. “The Feast of the Dead among the Seventeenth Century Algonkians of the Upper Great Lakes.” American Anthropologist 62, no 1 (1960): 81-107.
Tooker, Elisabeth. An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
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