In resemblance to the Hebrew custom of embalming their dead, the Choktah treat the corpse just as the religious Levite did his beloved concubine, who was abused by the Benjamites; for having placed the dead on a high scaffold stockaded round, at the distance of twelve yards from his house opposite to the door, the whole family convene there at the beginning of the fourth moon after the interment, to lament and feast together: after wailing a while on the mourning benches, which stand on the east side of the quadrangular tomb, they raise and bring out the corpse, and while the feast is getting ready, a person whose office it is, and properly called the bone-picker, dissects it, as if it was intended for the shambles in the time of a great famine, with his sharp-pointed, bloody knife. He continues busily employed in his reputed sacred office, till he has finished the task, and scraped all the flesh off the bones; which may justly be called the Choktah method of enbalming their dead. Then, they carefully place the bones in a kind of small chest, in their natural order, that they may with ease and certainty be some time afterward reunited, and proceed to strike up a song of lamentation, with various wailing tunes and notes: afterwards, they join as cheerfully in the funeral feast, as if their kinsman was only taking his usual sleep. Having regaled themselves with a plentiful variety, they go along with those beloved relicks of their dead, in solemn procession, lamenting with doleful notes, till they arrive at the bone-house, which stands in a solitary place, apart from the town: then they proceed around it, much after the manner of those who performed the obsequies of the Chikkasah chieftain, already described, and there deposit their kinsman’s bones to lie along side of his kindred-bones, till in due time they are revived by _Ishtohoollo Aba_, that he may repossess his favourite place.