A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American IndiansYarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
History
A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians
Yarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
Indians of North America -- Funeral customs and rites
In their Temples they have his [their chief God, the Devil’s] image
euill favouredly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines
of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin, in such manner as the
deformitie may well suit with such a God. By him is commonly the
sepulchre of their Kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then
dried upon hurdles till they be very dry, and so about the most of
their ioynts and necke they hang bracelets, or chaines of copper,
pearle, and such like, as they use to wear. Their inwards they
stuffe with copper beads, hatchets, and such trash. Then lappe they
them very carefully in white skins, and so rowle them in mats for
their winding-sheets. And in the Tombe, which is an arch made of
mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kind of wealth
their Kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These temples
and bodies are kept by their Priests.
For their ordinary burials, they dig a deepe hole in the earth with
sharpe stakes, and the corpse being lapped in skins and mats with
their Jewels they lay them upon stickes in the ground, and so cover
them with earth. The buriale ended, the women being painted all
their faces with blacke cole and oyle doe sit twenty-foure houres in
the houses mourning and lamenting by turnes with such yelling and
howling as may expresse their great passions. * * *
Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods there are three
great houses filled with images of their Kings and devils and the
tombes of their predecessors. Those houses are near sixty feet in
length, built harbourwise after their building. This place they
count so holey as that but the priests and Kings dare come into
them; nor the savages dare not go up the river in boates by it, but
that they solemnly cast some piece of copper, white beads or pocones
into the river for feare their Okee should be offended and revenged
of them.
They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteeme
quiyough-cosughs, when they are deade doe goe beyond the mountains
towards the setting of the sun, and ever remain there in form of
their Okee, with their bedes paynted rede with oyle and pocones,
finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets,
copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their
predecessors. But the common people they suppose shall not live
after deth, but rot in their graves like dede dogges.
This is substantially the same account as has been given on a former
page, the verbiage differing slightly, and the remark regarding
truthfulness will apply to it as well as to the other.
Figure 1 may again be referred to as an example of the dead-house
described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account