California Indians Cremation Ceremony
George Gibbs, in Schoolcraft, states that among the Indians of Clear Lake, California, “the body is consumed upon a scaffold built over a hole, into which the ashes are thrown and covered.”
According to Stephen Powers, cremation was common among the Se-nél of California. He thus relates it.
The dead are mostly burned. Mr. Willard described to me a scene of incremation that he once witnessed, which was frightful for its exhibitions of fanatic frenzy and infatuation. The corpse was that of a wealthy chieftain, and as he lay upon the funeral pyre they placed in his month two gold twenties, and other smaller coins in his ears and hands, on his breast, &c. besides all his finery, his feather mantles, plumes, clothing, shell money, his fancy bows, painted arrows, &c. When the torch was applied they set up a mournful ululation, chanting and dancing about him, gradually working themselves into a wild and ecstatic raving, which seemed almost a demoniacal possession, leaping, howling, lacerating their flesh. Many seemed to lose all self-control. The younger English-speaking Indians generally lend themselves charily to such superstitious work, especially if American spectators are present, but even they were carried away by the old contagious frenzy of their race. One stripped off a broadcloth coat, quite new and fine, and ran frantically yelling and cast it upon the blazing pile. Another rushed up, and was about to throw on a pile of California blankets, when a white man, to test his sincerity, offend him $16 for them, jingling the bright coins before his eyes, but the savage (for such he had become again for the moment) otherwise so avaricious, hurled him away with a yell of execration and ran and threw his offering into the flames. Squaws, even more frenzied, wildly flung upon the pyre all they had in the world—their dearest ornaments, their gaudiest dresses, their strings of glittering shells. Screaming, wailing, tearing their hair, beating their breasts in their mad and insensate infatuation, some of them would have cast themselves bodily into the flaming ruins and perished with the chief had they not been restrained by their companions. Then the bright, swift flames, with their hot tongues, licked this “cold obstruction” into chemic change, and the once “delighted spirit” of the savage was borne up. ***
It seems as if the savage shared in Shakspeare’s shudder at the thought of rotting in the dismal grave, for it is the one passion of his superstition to think of the soul, of his departed friend set free and purified by the swift purging heat of the flames not dragged down to be clogged and bound in the mouldering body, but borne up in the soft, warm chariots of the smoke toward the beautiful sun, to bask in his warmth and light, and then to fly away to the Happy Western Land. What wonder if the Indian shrinks with unspeakable horror from the thought of burying his friend’s soul!—of pressing and ramming down with pitiless clods that inner something which once took such delight in the sweet light of the sun! What wonder if it takes years to persuade him to do otherwise and follow our custom! What wonder if even then he does it with sad fears and misgivings! Why not let him keep his custom! In the gorgeous 148landscapes and balmy climate of California an Indian incremation is as natural to the savage as it is for him to love the beauty of the sun. Let the vile Esquimaux and the frozen Siberian bury their dead if they will; it matters little, the earth is the same above as below; or to them the bosom of the earth may seem even the better; but in California do not blame the savage if he recoils at the thought of going underground! This soft pale halo of the lilac hills—ah, let him console himself if he will with the belief that his lost friend enjoys it still! The narrator concluded by saying that they destroyed full $500 worth of property. “The blankets,” said he with a fine Californian scorn of much absurd insensibility to such a good bargain, “the blankets that the American offered him $16 for were not worth half the money.”
After death the Se-nél hold that bad Indians return into coyotes. Others fall off a bridge which all souls must traverse, or are hooked off by a raging bull at the further end, while the good escape across. Like the Yokaia and the Konkan, they believe it necessary to nourish the spirits of the departed for the space of a year. This is generally done by a squaw, who takes pinole in her blanket, repairs to the scene of the incremation, or to places hallowed by the memory of the dead, when she scatters it over the ground, meantime rocking her body violently to and fro in a dance and chanting the following
chorous:
chorous:
Hel-lel-li-ly,
Hel-lel-lo,
Hel-lel-lu.
This refrain is repeated over and over indefinitely, but the words have no meaning whatever.
