The Indian women mourn three moons, for the death of any female of their own family or tribe. During that time, they are not to anoint, or tie up their hair; neither is the husband of the deceased allowed, when the offices of nature do not call him, to go out of the house, much less to join any company: and in that time of mourning he often lies among the ashes. The time being expired, the female mourners meet in the evening of the beginning of the fourth moon, at the house where their female relation is intombed, and stay there till morning, when the nearest surviving old kinswoman crops their fore-locks pretty short. This they call _Ehó Intànáah_, “the women have mourned the appointed time.” _Ehó_ signifies “a woman,” _Inta_ “finished by divine appointment,” _Aà_ “moving” or walking, and _Ah_, “their note of grief, sorrow, or mourning:” the name expresses, and the custom is a visible certificate of, their having mourned the appointed time for their dead. When they have eaten and drank together, they return home by sun-rise, and thus finish their solemn _Yah-ah_.[82] ARGUMENT XXI. The surviving brother, by the Mosaic law, was to RAISE SEED to a deceased brother who left a widow childless, to perpetuate his name and family, and inherit his goods and estate, or be degraded: and, if the issue he begat was a male child, it assumed the name of the deceased. The Indian custom[83] looks the very same way; yet it is in this as in their law of blood—the eldest brother can redeem. Although a widow is bound, by a strict penal law, to mourn the death of her husband for the space of three or four years; yet, if she be known to lament her loss with a sincere heart, for the space of a year, and her circumstances of living are so strait as to need a change of her station—and the elder brother of her deceased husband lies with her, she is thereby exempted {189} from the law of mourning, has a liberty to tie up her hair, anoint and paint herself in the same manner as the Hebrew widow, who was refused by the surviving brother of her deceased husband, became free to marry whom she pleased.