Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ily went to hide himself behind a thick bush, where at his pleasure he could easily reconnoiter the ceremonies of the feaat. The three who began the feast are called joanas,1 and are like priests or sacrificers according to the Indian law, to whom they give faith and credence in part because as a class2 they are devoted to the sacrifices and in part also because everything lost is recovered by their means. And not only are they revered on account of these things but also because by I do not know what science and knowledge that they have of herbs they cure sicknesses. Those who had thus gone away among the woods returned two days later. Then, having arrived, they began to dance with a courageous gayety in the very middle of the open space, and to cheer their good Indian fathers, who on account of advanced age, or else their natural indisposition, had not been called to the feast. All these dances having been brought to an end they began to eat with an avidity so great that they seemed rather to devour the food than to eat it. For neither on the feast day nor on the two following days had they drunk or eaten. Our Frenchmen were not forgotten in this good cheer, for the Indians went to invite them all. showing themselves very happy at their presence. Having remained some time with the Indians a Frenchman gained a young boy by presents and inquired of him what the Indians had done during their absence in the woods, who gave him to understand by signs that the joanas had made invocations to Toya, and that by magic characters they had made him come so that they could speak to him and ask him many strange things, which for fear of the joanas he did not dare to make known. They have besides many other ceremonies which I will not recount here for fear of wearying the readers over matters o…
