Similar opinions, among many different tribes, I have heard declared in direct terms; yet, did we want further testimony, some of their burial customs and funeral rites would seem to indicate their ideas of the future state. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Kansas, and kindred tribes, besides many others, or perhaps most others of the frontier, have been accustomed to inter the most valuable property of the deceased and many necessaries with them. "Their whole property was buried {243} with them,"[181] says an intelligent Cherokee, in some manuscript notes concerning his ancestors, I have in my possession: and I have been assured by creditable natives, that, within their recollection [Pg291] they have seen, at these burials, provisions, salt, and other necessaries, interred with the dead for their long journey. There are very few of the prairie Indians but practise something of this kind: many kill the favorite hunting-horses, and deposit the arms, etc., of the deceased, for his use in the chase, when he arrives at the 'happy hunting ground.' We are also informed by Capt. Bonneville, and other travellers, that this is practised by some, if not all, of the natives beyond the Rocky Mountains. The same is told of the Navajoes, Apaches, and other uncatholicized tribes of the north of Mexico. Peter Martyr, a learned and celebrated protestant divine, who wrote his "Decades of the Newe Worlde"[182] towards the middle of the sixteenth century, observes that, "in many places of the firme lande, when any of the kynges dye, all his householde servauntes, as well women as men which have continually served hym, kyl themselves, beleavynge, as they are taught by the devyl _Tuyra_, that they which kyll themselves when the kynge dyeth, go with hym to heaven and serve hym in the same place and office as they dyd before on {244} the earth whyle he lyved.[183] And that all that refuse so to doo, when after they dye by theyr naturall death or otherwyse, theyr soules to dye with theyr bodyes, and to bee dissolved into ayer and become nothynge as do the soules of hogges, byrdes or fysshes, or other brute [Pg292] beastes."[184] In corroboration of a similar custom among the natives along the Mississippi, in 1542, Herrera relates,[185] that, after the death of Fernando de Soto, and his party had set out westward, they were joined by a youth, who stated that he had fled to escape being buried with his lord who had died; which was the practice in that country. Travellers from the upper lakes to the Mississippi speak of similar customs, at an early day, among the tribes of that quarter.