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
A Yo-kai-a widow's style of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the
usual evidences of grief she mingles the ashes of her dead husband
with pitch making a white tar or unguent, with which she smears a band
about two inches wide all around the edge of the hair (which is
previously cut off close to the head) so that at a little distance she
appears to be wearing a white chaplet.
It is their custom to feed the spirits of the dead for the space of
one year by going daily to places which they were accustomed to
frequent while living, where they sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A
Yo-kai-a mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to
some place where her little one played when alive or to the spot where
the body was burned and milks her breasts into the air. This is
accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon
her little one to return and sometimes she sings a hoarse and
melancholy chant and dances with a wild ecstatic swaying of her body.
SONGS.
It has nearly always been customary to sing songs at not only funerals
but for varying periods of time afterwards although these chants may
no doubt occasionally have been simply wailing or mournful
ejaculation. A writer [Footnote: Am. Antiq., April-May-June 1879, p.
251.] mentions it as follows:
"At almost all funerals there is an irregular crying kind of singing
with no accompaniments, but generally all do not sing the same melody
at the same time in unison. Several may sing the same song and at the
same time, but each begins and finishes when he or she may wish. Often
for weeks, or even months, after the decease of a dear friend, a
living one, usually a woman, will sit by her house and sing or cry by
the hour; and they also sing for a short time when they visit the
grave or meet an esteemed friend whom they have not seen since the
decease. At the funeral both men and women sing. No. 11 I have heard
more frequently some time after the funeral, and No. 12 at the time of
the funeral, by the Twanas (For song see p. 251.) The words are simply
an exclamation of grief, as our word 'alas'; but they also have other
words which they use, and sometimes they use merely the syllable
_la_. Often the notes are sung in this order, and sometimes not,
but in some order the notes _do_ and _la,_ and occasionally
_mi,_ are sung."
GAMES.
It is not proposed to describe under this heading examples of those
athletic and gymnastic performances following the death of a person
which have been described by Lafitau, but simply to call attention to
a practice as a secondary or adjunct part of the funeral rites, which
consists in gambling for the possession of the property of the
defunct. Dr. Charles E. McChesney, U. S. A., who for some time was
stationed among the Wahpeton and Sisseton Sioux, furnishes a detailed
and interesting account of what is called the "ghost gamble." This is
played with marked wild-plum stones. So far as ascertained it is
peculiar to the Sioux.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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