An Introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American IndiansYarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
History
An Introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians
Yarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
Indians of North America -- Funeral customs and rites
Jones [Footnote: Antiquities of the Southern Indiana, 1873, p. 105.]
quotes one of the older writers, as follows, regarding the
_Natchez_ tribe:
"Among the Natchez the dead were either inhumed or placed in tombs.
These tombs were located within or very near their temples. They
rested upon four forked sticks fixed fast in the ground, and were
raised some three feet above the earth. About eight feet long and a
foot and a half wide, they were prepared for the reception of a single
corpse. After the body was placed upon it, a basket-work of twigs was
woven around and covered with mud, an opening being left at the head,
through which food was presented to the deceased. When the flesh had
all rotted away, the bones were taken out, placed in a box made of
canes, and then deposited in the temple. The common dead were mourned
and lamented for a period of three days. Those who fell in battle were
honored with a more protracted and grievous lamentation."
Bartram [Footnote: Bartram's Travel, 1791, p. 516.] gives a somewhat
different account from Roman of burial among the Choctaws of Carolina:
"The Choctaws pay their last duties and respect to the deceased in a
very different manner. As soon as a person is dead, they erect a
scaffold 18 or 20 feet high in a grove adjacent to the town, where
they lay the corps, lightly covered with a mantle; here it is suffered
to remain, visited and protected by the friends and relations, until
the flesh becomes putrid, so as easily to part from the bones; then
undertakers, who make it their business, carefully strip the flesh
from the bones, wash and cleanse them, and when dry and purified by
the air, having provided a curiously-wrought chest or coffin,
fabricated of bones and splints, they place all the bones therein,
which is deposited in the bone-house, a building erected for that
purpose in every town; and when this house is full a general solemn
funeral takes place; when the nearest kindred or friends of the
deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone-house, take up the
respective coffins, and, following one another in order of seniority,
the nearest relations and connections attending their respective
corps, and the multitude following after them, all as one family, with
united voice of alternate allelujah and lamentation, slowly proceeding
on to the place of general interment, when they place the coffins in
order, forming a pyramid; [Footnote: Some ingenious men whom I have
conversed with have given it as their opinion that all those pyramidal
artificial hills, usually called Indian mounds, were raised on this
occasion, and are generally sepulchres. However, I am of different
opinion.] and, lastly, cover all over with earth, which raises a
conical hill or mount; when they return to town in order of solemn
procession, concluding the day with a festival, which is called the
feast of the dead."
Morgan [Footnote: League of the Iroquois 1851, p. 171] also alludes to
this mode of burial:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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