Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
The death of ordinary Indians is attended with like results, though
if not warriors of note they are merely enveloped in their ordinary
clothing and blankets or skins with their implements, but no horse is
killed over their grave. When women die their favorite dogs are killed
and all their tools for scraping and dressing hides, with their pillow
and porcupine quills, are enveloped with them. If she be the wife of
a chief or man of importance she is also wrapped in scarlet cloth,
formerly in painted skins. There is as much mourning and distress
observed on the death of their children, perhaps more, than when grown.
On these occasions often some one of the parents destroy themselves,
and all other Indians are very attentive to them for several days until
the most violent grief is over. Should anyone offend the parent during
this time his death would most certainly follow, as the man, being in
profound sorrow, seeks something on which to wreak his revenge, and he
soon after goes to war, to kill or be killed, either of which being
immaterial to him in that state.
The reason the implements are deposited in the grave is that they are
supposed to be necessary to his being in the world of spirits. It is a
very ancient custom, perhaps coeval with their existence.
We know of no tumulus or barrow erected either in former or later times
through this country containing many bodies or possessing the character
of a charnel house, but are in the knowledge of the graves of many
chiefs either on scaffolds or on hills.
Bodies are never interred in a sitting posture, though that manner is
sometimes observed when deposited in the lodge above ground and the
posture preserved by stakes driven in around the body with forks on the
end supporting the different members and equilibrium.
There are no herbs or spices placed with the corpse, neither is it
submitted to any process analogous to embalming. It is enveloped, as
before mentioned, in skins to which those who can afford it add scarlet
cloth and blankets.
Scaffolding of corpses is the general manner of disposing of them with
all the prairie tribes, and the way they are prepared has been alluded
to. They would prefer having them boxed instead of baled, but have no
tools to prepare timber, and even if they had can not at all times
procure it, which together with their lack of means to excavate in
these frozen regions were no doubt the original causes of this mode of
burial. When bodies are brought to the trading houses for interment or
scaffolding they are always boxed by the whites, the coffin being made
large enough to contain the implements and ornaments enveloped with the
corpse. This in former times was a great honor done the Indians and
highly recompensed, but of later years is a great bore and expense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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