OAS ARCH NOTES 86-5:5-8
John Steckley
In recent years there has been a significant discussion Of infant burial in and around the longhouses of Ontario Iroquoians (Kapches 1976; Fitzgerald 1979, and Knight and Melbye 1983). In this short work I will be attempting to add a linguistic voice to this discussion. I will begin with concrete linguistic evidence concerning Huron recognition of the father’s role in the conception of a child, and move toward more speculative suggestions concerning the clan affiliation of infants interred in longhouses and along pathways.
1.0 Recognition of the Father’s Role in Conception
There is strong linguistic evidence demonstrating overt Huron recognition of the father’s role in conception; evidence that suggests that it was considered primary.
The verb “ak8eton”, given by Jesuit Father Pierre Potier as meaning, “enfanter, engendrer, produire ou avoir des enfants/to give birth to, beget, produce or have children/” (Potier 1920: 170 #59), was often used to refer to men. The followinq are typical examples:
1.1 “Stante hak8etonk *il n’a point d’enfans, il est sterile/He doesn’t have children; he is sterile./” (ibid)
1.2 “ndak ihok8eto *il a 4 enfans/he has four children./” (ibid)
This points at least to equality of recognition of the father’s with the mother’s role. Other evidence suggests primacy.
The term for human semen was “onnenha” (Potier 1920: 450), a word usually used to refer to ‘corn’. The analogy made is to a ‘seed’, the original meaning of the word in Iroquoian generally (Mithun 1984: 272). The Mohawk and Oneida still use cognates (related terms) to refer to seeds (ibid). It could be considered mythological support for the notion of the male ‘seed function’ that it was a male spirit, “Iouskeha”, who:
“… gives them the…/corn/ … they eat, it is he who makes it grow and brings it to maturity. If they see their fields verdant in the spring, if they reap good and abundant harvests, and if their Cabins are crammed with ears of corn, they owe it to Iouskeha.” (JR1O:137-139)
Other evidence that seems to point to male primacy in reproduction comes from the verb “ondi”, meaning ‘to make’ (Potier 1920:408 #26). With the semireflexive prefix -at-, which adds a sense similar to the passive in English, the literal translation is ‘to be made’. However, it was typically used with the meanings or connotations of:
a) ‘to be born’;
b) ‘to germinate and rise above the ground’ (for a seed); and
c) ‘to be on the paternal side of a person’s family’ (Potier 1920:409).
Not only does this linquistically continue the identification of human birth with plant germination, but it also is used to express that the father’s family or clan forms the group of a child’s ‘makers’.
This occurred in the noun “atondicha”–made up of the form given above plus a nominalizer (noun maker) -ch- and noun suffix -a-. With the verb “,aen”, meaning ‘to have’ (Potier 1920:221), it had the meaning, “être né de tels ou tels, les avoir pour parens du coté de son père/to be born or such or such, to have them as relatives on the father’s side/ (Potier 1920:408 #26). Examples are the following:
1.3 “a,atondichen mes parens du coté paternel/my relatives on the paternal side; literally, I have as my makers/.” (ibid)
1.4 “te sk8a, atondichen je n’ai plus de parents du coté de mon père/I no longer have paternal relatives/.” (ibid)
2.0 Clan Affiliation
Maternal relatives were referred to with the verb, “,en^tio” (Potier 1920:391 #13), as can be seen in the following examples:
2.1 “honditio,e ils sont parents du cote maternel/they are relatives on the maternal side/.” (ibid)
2.2 “?o ichien a,itio,e j’ai la mes parents du cote de ma mere/I have my maternal relatives there/.” (ibid)
(28)
A noun derived from this verb, “,entiok8a”, referred to clan (see Steckley 1982:30), although it was also often used with the more generalized meaning, ‘group’ (see Potier 1920:455). Regarding the former, we have examples like the following in Huron dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries:
2.3 “famille… de quelle famille as tu? ndia8eron esentiock8tn/Of what nature is your clan? (translated from the Huron) /andia8ich. de la tortue/turtle/… ,annion,en l’ours/bear/…” (FHL74)
It is suggested here that the Huron felt that the father, in providing the ‘seed’, was the ‘maker’ of the child, while the mother nourished the seed, like the earth nourishes a corn seed, and gave the child its identity by giving it clan membership, just as a corn plant was in a field possessed or worked by a matrilineal clan or clan segment.
The clan identity would come with the naming of the child. There is, to my knowledge, no direct evidence stating when Huron children were first given names. Naming among Amerindian peoples typically did not occur immediately after birth (Driver 1970:368), but awaited the cessation of pregnancy taboos extended beyond birth, the preparation of a suitable ceremony, and the arrival of an appropriate date. Nicholas Perrot wrote of Great Lakes Algonkians around the beginning of the 18th century that a naming ceremony took place as age five or six months (as recorded in Kinietz 1965:276). Thus it seems fair to assume that the following infant burial practice reported by Father Jean de Brebeuf in the Relation of 1636 would happen to children not yet given a name:
“There are even special ceremonies for little children who die less than a month or two old; they do not put them like the others into bark tombs set up on posts, but inter them on the road,–in order that, they say, if some woman passes that way, they may secretly enter her womb, and that she may give them life again and bring them forth… This fine ceremony took place this winter in the person of one of our little Christians, who had been named Joseph at baptism.1 I learned it on this occasion from the lips of the child’s father himself.” (JR10:273)
I would argue that a child not yet named, not yet the incarnation of early members of the mother’s clan, would still be considered his/her father’s seed and that because of incest taboos this would affect the place of burial. If the child to be ‘re-born’ entered the womb of a woman of his/her father’s clan that would be considered incest.
The Huron had well-established rules against incest (JR:119 and JR10:213). Some suggestion that incest considerations were important in the birth of children who had been in the ground can be seen in the story of a short, hunchbacked shaman. He claimed:
“I am a spirit. I formerly lived under the ground in the house of the spirits, when the fancy seized me to become a man; and this is how it happened. Having heard one day, from this subterranean abode, the voices and cries of some children who were guarding the crops and chasing the animals and birds away, I resolved to go out. I was no sooner upon the earth than I encountered a woman. I craftily entered her womb and there assumed a little body. I had with me a she-spirit, who did the same thing. As soon as were about the size of an ear of corn, this woman wished to be delivered of her fruit, knowing that she had not conceived by human means and fearing that this ocki/spirit/ might bring her some misfortune. So she found means of hastening her time. Now it seems to me that in the meantime, being ashamed to see myself followed by a girl and fearing that she might afterward be taken for my wife, I beat her so hard that I left her for dead; in fact, she came dead into the world. This woman, being delivered, took us both, wrapped us in a beaver skin, carried us into the woods, placed us in the hollow of a tree, and abandoned us.” (JR13:105-107)
Of primary significance here is the shaman’s incest fear that his ‘sister’, would be taken for his wife, and he be therefore thought of as one who would commit incest.
The ‘safest’ (in terms of incest) place for an infant to be buried would be where a member of the mother’s clan would be the future mother. This would be either in or around a longhouse of the mother’s clan, or on the paths leading to or in fields worked by females of that clan.
While it would be difficult to confirm this hypothesis with archaeological evidence, I would suggest that if the infant were buried in such a way that it could he interpreted that he/she was treated like a ‘seed’ this would strenghthen the hvpothesis.
Footnote
1-The fact that no Huron name was mentioned for this child suggests that no Huron naming had taken place.
References Cited
Driver, Harold
1970 Indians of North America. 2nd ed., Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press.
FHL
c1697 French-Huron dictionary ms.
Fitzgerald, William
1979 “The Hood Site: Longhouse Burials in an Historic Neutral Village”, Ontario Archaeology 32:43-60.
Kapches, Mima
1976 “The Interment of Infants of the Ontario Iroquois”, Ontario Archaeology 27:29-39.
Kinietz, W. Vernon
1965 The Indians of the Western Great Lakes: 1615-1760, Ann Arbour, Univ. of Michigan Press.
Knight, Dean & Jerry Melbye
1983 “Burial Patterns at the Ball Site”, Ontario Archaeology, 40:37-48.
Potier, Pierre
1920 “Radices Huronicae”, Fifteenth Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, Toronto, C. W. James, pp, 159-455.
Steckley, John L.
1982 “Huron Clans and Phratries.”, Ontario Archaeology 37:29-34.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold
(JR) 1959 The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols., New York.