American Indian Lodge Burials

American Indian Lodge Burials

General Stewart Van Vliet, U.S.A., informs the writer that among the Sioux of Wyoming and Nebraska when a person of consequence dies a small scaffold is erected inside his lodge and the body wrapped in skins deposited therein. Different utensils and weapons are placed by his side, and in front a horse is slaughtered; the lodge is then closed up.

Dr. W. J. Hoffman writes as follows regarding the burial lodges of the Shoshones of Nevada:

The Shoshones of the upper portion of Nevada are not known to have at any time practiced cremation. In Independence Valley, under a deserted and demolished wickeup or “brush tent,” I found the dried-up corpse of a boy, about twelve years of age. The body had been here for at least six weeks, according to information received, and presented a shriveled and hideous appearance. The dryness of the atmosphere prevented decomposition. The Indians in this region usually leave the body when life terminates, merely throwing over it such rubbish as may be at hand, or the remains of their primitive shelter tents, which are mostly composed of small branches, leaves, grass, &c.

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The Shoshones living on Independence Creek and on the eastern banks of the Owyhee River, upper portion of Nevada, did not bury their dead at the time of my visit in 1871. Whenever the person died, his lodge (usually constructed of poles and branches of Salix) was demolished and placed in one confused mass over his remains, when the band removed a short distance. When the illness is not too great, or death sudden, the sick person is removed to a favorable place, some distance from their temporary camping ground, so as to avoid the necessity of their own removal. Coyotes, ravens, and other carnivores soon remove all the flesh so that there remains nothing but the bones, and even these are scattered by the wolves. The Indians at Tuscarora, Nevada, stated that when it was possible and that they should by chance meet the bony remains of any Shoshone, they would bury it, but in what manner I failed to discover as the were very reticent, and avoided giving any information regarding the dead. One corpse was found totally dried and shrivelled, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere in this region.

Capt. F. W. Beechey60 describes a curious mode of burial among the Esquimaux on the west coast of Alaska, which appears to be somewhat similar to lodge burial. Figure 11, after his illustration, affords a good idea of these burial receptacles.

Fig. 11.—Eskimo lodge burial.

Near us there was a burying ground, which in addition to what we had already observed at Cape Espenburg furnished several examples of the manner in which this tribe of natives dispose of their dead. In some instances a platform was constructed of drift-wood raised about two feet and a quarter from the ground, upon which the body was placed, with its head to the westward and a double tent of drift-wood erected over it, the inner one with spars about seven feet long, and the outer one with some that were three times that length. They were placed close together, and at first no doubt sufficiently so to prevent the depredations of foxes and wolves, but they had yielded at last, and all the bodies, and even the hides that covered them, had suffered by these rapacious animals.

In these tents of the dead there were no coffins or planks, as at Cape Espenburg, the bodies were dressed in a frock made of eider duck skins, with one of deer skin over it, and were covered with a sea horse hide, such as the natives use for their baidars. Suspended to the poles, and on the ground near them, were several Esquimaux implements, consisting of wooden trays, paddles, and a tamborine, which, we were informed as well as signs could convey the meaning of the natives, were placed there for the use of the deceased, who, in the next world (pointing to the western sky) ate, drank, and sang songs. Having no interpreter, this was all the information I could obtain, but the custom of placing such instruments around the receptacles of the dead is not unusual, and in all probability the Esquimaux may believe that the soul has enjoyments in the next world similar to those which constitute their happiness in this.

The Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Navajos also bury in lodges, and the Indians of Bellingham Bay, according to Dr. J. F. Hammond, U.S.A., place their dead in carved wooden sarcophagi, inclosing these with a rectangular tent of some white material. Some of the tribes of the northwest coast bury in houses similar to those shown in Figure 12.

Fig. 12.—Burial Houses.

Bancroft states that certain of the Indians of Costa Rica, when a death occurred, deposited the body in a small hut constructed of plaited palm reeds. In this it is preserved for three years, food being supplied, 155and on each anniversary of the death it is redressed and attended to amid certain ceremonies. The writer has been recently informed that a similar custom prevailed in Demerara. No authentic accounts are known of analogous modes of burial among the peoples of the Old World, although quite frequently the dead were interred beneath the floors of their houses, a custom which has been followed by the Mosquito Indians of Central America and one or two of our own tribes.

Sioux Lodge Burials

Sioux Indian

LODGE-BURIAL.

Our attention should next be turned to sepulture above the ground, including lodge, house, box, scaffold, tree, and canoe burial, and the first example which may be given is that of burial in lodges, which is by no means common. The description which follows is by Stansbury, and relates to the Sioux:

I put on my moccasins, and, displaying my wet shirt like a flag to the wind, we proceeded to the lodges which had attracted our curiosity. There were five of them pitched upon the open prairie, and in them we found the bodies of nine Sioux laid out upon the ground, wrapped in their robes of buffalo-skin, with their saddles, spears, camp-kettles, and all their accoutrements piled up around them. Some lodges contained three, others only one body, all of which were more or less in a state of decomposition. A short distance apart from these was one lodge which, though small, seemed of rather superior pretensions, and was evidently pitched with great care. It contained the body of a young Indian girl of sixteen or eighteen years, with a countenance presenting quite an agreeable expression: she was richly dressed in leggins of fine scarlet cloth elaborately ornamented; a new pair of moccasins, beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills, was on her feet, and her body was wrapped in two superb buffalo-robes worked in like manner; she had evidently been dead but a day or two, and to our surprise a portion of the upper part of her person was bare, exposing the face and a part of the breast, as if the robes in which she was wrapped had by some means been disarranged, whereas all the other bodies were closely covered up. 153It was, at the time, the opinion of our mountaineers, that these Indians must have fallen in an encounter with a party of Crows; but I subsequently learned that they had all died of the cholera, and that this young girl, being considered past recovery, had been arranged by her friends in the habiliments of the dead, inclosed in the lodge alive, and abandoned to her fate, so fearfully alarmed were the Indians by this to them novel and terrible disease.

It might, perhaps, be said that this form of burial was exceptional, and due to the dread of again using the lodges which had served as the homes of those afflicted with the cholera, but it is thought such was not the case, as the writer has notes of the same kind of burial among the same tribe and of others, notably the Crows, the body of one of their chiefs (Long Horse) being disposed of as follows:

The lodge poles inclose an oblong circle some 18 by 22 feet at the base, converging to a point, at least 30 feet high, covered with buffalo-hides dressed without hair except a part of the tail switch, which floats outside like, and mingled with human scalps. The different skins are neatly fitted and sewed together with sinew, and all painted in seven alternate horizontal stripes of brown and yellow, decorated with various lifelike war scenes. Over the small entrance is a large bright cross, the upright being a large stuffed white wolf-skin upon his war lance, and the cross-bar of bright scarlet flannel, containing the quiver of bow and arrows, which nearly all warriors still carry, even when armed with repeating rifles. As the cross is not a pagan but a Christian (which Long Horse was not either by profession or practice) emblem, it was probably placed there by the influence of some of his white friends. I entered, finding Long Horse buried Indian fashion, in full war dress, paint and feathers, in a rude coffin, upon a platform about breast high, decorated with weapons, scalps, and ornaments. A large opening and wind-flap at the top favored ventilation, and though he had lain there in an open coffin a full month, some of which was hot weather, there was but little effluvia; in fact, I have seldom found much in a burial-teepee, and when this mode of burial is thus performed it is less repulsive than natural to suppose.