California Yosemite Indians Cremation of the Dead

YOSEMITE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA -DISPOSING OF THE DEAD.

In the early days of the settlement of California, it seemed to be the universal custom of the Indians along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range of mountains to burn the bodies of their dead.
A suitable pile of readily combustible wood was prepared. The body was taken charge of by persons chosen to perform the last sacred rites, and firmly bound in skins or blankets, and then placed upon the funeral pyre, with all the personal effects of the deceased, together with numerous votive offerings from friends and relatives. The chief mourners of the occasion seemed to take but little active part in the ceremonies. When all was ready, one of the assistants would light the fire, and the terrible, wailing, mournful cry would commence, and the professional chanters, with peculiar sidling movements and frantic gestures, would circle round and round about the burning pile. Occasionally, on arriving at the northwest corner of the pile, they would stop, and, pointing to the West, would end a crying refrain by exclaiming "Him-i-la´-ha!" When these became exhausted, others would step in and take their places, and thus keep up the mournful ceremony until the whole pile was consumed.
After the pile had cooled, the charred bones and ashes were gathered up, a few pieces of bone selected, and the remainder buried. Of the pieces retained, some would be sent to distant relatives, and the others pounded to a fine powder, then mixed with pine pitch and plastered on the faces of the nearest female relatives as a badge of mourning, to be kept there until it naturally wore off. Every Indian camp used to have some of these hideous looking old women in it in the "early days."

One principal reason for burning the bodies of the dead was the belief that there is an evil spirit, waiting and watching for the animating spirit or soul to leave the body, that he may get it to take to his own world of darkness and misery. By burning the perishable body they thought that the immortal soul would be more quickly released and set free to speed to the happy spirit world in the El-o´-win, or far distant West, while with their loud, wailing cries the evil spirit was kept awa

The young women take great care of their long, shiny, black hair, of which they all feel very proud, as adding much to their personal beauty, and they seldom have it cut before marriage. But upon the death of a husband the wife has her hair all cut off and burned with his body, so that he may still have it in his future spirit home, to love and caress as a memento of his living earth-wife.

Beothuk Indian Method of Burials

The Boeothicks appear to have shown great respect for their dead, and the most remarkable remains of them commonly observed by Europeans at the sea coasts are their burial places. They had several modes of interment—one was when the body of the deceased had been wrapped in birch rind, it was then, with his property, placed on a sort of scaffold about four feet from the ground—the scaffold supported a flooring of small squared beams laid close together, on which the body and property rested.

A second method was, when the body bent together and wrapped in birch rinds was enclosed in a sort of box on the ground—this box was made of small square posts laid on each other horizontally and notched at the corners to make them meet close—it was about four feet high, three feet broad, and two-feet-and-a-half deep, well lined with birch rind, so as to exclude the weather from the inside—the body was always laid on its right side.

A third, and the most common method of burying among this people, was to wrap the body in birch rind, and then cover it over with a heap of stones on the surface of the earth; but occasionally in sandy places, or where the earth was soft and easily removed, the body was sunk lower in the earth and the stones omitted.

The Okee Devil and the Algonquin Indian Mummification Ceremony

The Okee Devil and the Algonquin Indian Mummification Ceremony

Following and in connection with cave burial, the subject of mummifying or embalming the dead may be taken up, as most specimens of the kind have generally been found in such repositories.

It might be both interesting and instructive to search out and discuss the causes which have led many nations or tribes to adopt certain processes with a view to prevent that return to dust which all flesh must sooner or later experience, but the necessarily limited scope of this work precludes more than a brief mention of certain theories advanced by writers of note, and which relate to the ancient Egyptians. Possibly at the time the Indians of America sought to preserve their dead from decomposition, some such ideas may have animated them, but on this point no definite information has been procured. In the final volume an effort will be made to trace out the origin of mummification among the Indians and aborigines of this continent.

According to Pinkerton, who took the account from Smith’s Virginia, the Werowance of Virginia preserved their dead as follows:

In their Temples they have his [their chief God, the Devil’s] image will favourdly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin, in such manner as the deformity may well suit with such a God. By him is commonly the sepulchre of their Kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then dried upon hurdles till they be very dry, and so about the most of their joints and neck they hang bracelets, or chains of copper, pearl, and such like, as they use to wear. Their inwards they stuff with copper beads, hatchets, and such trash. Then lappe they them very carefully in white skins, and so roll them in mats for their winding-sheets. And in the Tombe, which is an arch made of mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kind of wealth their Kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These temples and bodies are kept by their Priests.

For their ordinary burials, they dig a deep hole in the earth with sharp stakes, and the corpse being lapped in skins and mats with their Jewels they lay them upon sticks in the ground, and so cover them with earth. The burial ended, the women being painted all their faces with black cole and oil doe sit twenty-foure hours in the houses mourning and lamenting by turns with such yelling and howling as may express their great passions. ***

Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods there are three great houses filled with images of their Kings and devils and the tombs of their predecessors. Those houses are near sixty feet in length, built harbourwise after their building. This place they count so holy as that but the priests and Kings dare come into them; nor the savages dare not go up the river in boats by it, but that they solemnly cast 
2me piece of copper, white beads or pocones into the river for fear their Okee should be offended and revenged of them.

They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteem, when they are dead doe goes beyond the mountains towards the setting of the sun, and ever remain there in form of their Okee, with their besds painted  red with oil, finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets, copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their predecessors. But the common people they suppose shall not live after death, but rot in their graves like dead dogs.

Native American's Dance for the Dead

Native American's Dance for the Dead

Gymnastic exercises, dignified with this name, upon the occasion of a death or funeral, were common to many tribes. It is thus described by Morgan:

    An occasional and very singular figure was called the “dance for the dead.” It was known as the O-hé-wä. It was danced by the women alone. The music was entirely vocal, a select band of singers being stationed in the center of the room. To the songs for the dead which they sang the dancers joined in chorus. It was plaintive and mournful music. This dance was usually separate from all councils and the only dance of the occasion. It was commenced at dusk or soon after and continued until towards morning, when the shades of the dead who were believed to be present and participate in the dance were supposed to disappear. The dance was had whenever a family which had lost a member called for it, which was usually a year after the event. In the spring and fall it was often given for all the dead indiscriminately, who were believed then to revisit the earth and join in the dance.

The interesting account which now follows is by Stephen Powers and relates to the Yo-kaí-a of California, containing other matters of importance pertaining to burial:

I paid a visit to their camp four miles below Ukiah, and finding there a unique kind of assembly-house, desired to enter and examine it, but was not allowed to do so until I had gained the confidence of the old sexton by a few friendly words and the tender of a silver half dollar. The pit of it was about 50 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet deep, and it was so heavily roofed with earth that the interior was damp and somber as a tomb. It looked like a low tumulus, and was provided with a tunnel-like entrance about 10 feet long and 4 feet high, and leading down to a level with the floor of the pit. The mouth of the tunnel was closed with brush, and the venerable sexton would not remove it until he had slowly and devoutly paced several times to and fro before the entrance.

Passing in I found the massive roof supported by a number of peeled poles painted white and ringed with black and ornamented with rude devices. The floor was covered thick and green with sprouting wheat, which had been scattered to feed the spirit of the captain of the tribe, lately deceased. Not long afterwards a deputation of the Senèl come up to condole with the Yo-kaí-a on the loss of their chief, and a dance or series of dances was held which lasted three days. During this time of course the Senèl were the guests of the Yo-kaí-a, and the latter were subjected to a 

considerable expense. I was prevented by other engagements from being present, and shall be obliged to depend on the description of an eye-witness, Mr. John Tenney, whose account is here given with a few changes:

There are four officials connected with the building, who are probably chosen to preserve order and to allow no intruders. They are the assistants of the chief. The invitation to attend was from one of them, and admission was given by the same. These four wore black vests trimmed with red flannel and shell ornaments. The chief made no special display on the occasion. In addition to these four, who were officers of the assembly-chamber, there were an old man and a young woman, who seemed to be priest and priestess. The young woman was dressed differently from any other, the rest dressing in plain calico dresses. Her dress was white covered with spots of red flannel, cut in neat figure, ornamented with shells. It looked gorgeous and denoted some office, the name of which I could not ascertain. Before the visitors were ready to enter, the older men of the tribe were reclining around the fire smoking and chatting. As the ceremonies were about to commence, the old man and young woman were summoned, and, standing at the end opposite the entrance, they inaugurated the exercises by a brief service, which seemed to be a dedication of the house to the exercises about to commence. Each of them spoke a few words, joined in a brief chant, and the house was thrown open for their visitors. They staid at their post until the visitors entered and were seated on one side of the room. After the visitors then others were seated, making about 200 in all, though there was plenty of room in the center for the dancing.

Before the dance commented the chief of the visiting tribe made a brief speech in which he no doubt referred to the death of the chief of the Yo-kaí-a, and offered the sympathy of his tribe in this loss. As he spoke, some of the women scarcely refrained from crying out, and with difficulty they suppressed their sobs. I presume that he proposed a few moments of mourning, for when he stopped the whole assemblage burst forth into a bitter wailing, some screaming as if in agony. The whole thing created such a din that I was compelled to stop my ears. The air was rent and pierced with their cries. This wailing and shedding of tears lasted about three or five minutes, though it seemed to last a half hour. At a given signal they ceased, wiped their eyes, and quieted down.

Then preparations were made for the dance. One end of the room was set aside for the dressing-room. The chief actors wens five men, who were muscular and agile. They were profusely decorated with paint and feathers, while white and dark stripes covered their bodies. They were girt about the middle with cloth of bright colors, sometimes with variegated shawls. A feather mantle hung from the shoulder, reaching below the knee; strings of shells ornamented the neck, while their heads were covered with a crown of eagle feathers. They had whistles in their months as they danced, swaying their heads, bending and whirling their bodies; every muscle seemed to be exercised, and the feather ornaments quivered with light. They were agile and graceful as they bounded about in the sinuous course of the dance.

The five men were assisted by a semicircle of twenty women, who only marked time by stepping up and down with short step. They always took their places first and disappeared first, the men making their exit gracefully one by one. The dresses of the women were suitable for the occasion. They were white dresses, trimmed heavily with black velvet. The stripes were about three inches wide, some plain and others edged like saw teeth. This was an indication of their mourning for the dead chief, in whose honor they had prepared that style of dancing. Strings of haliotis and pachydesma shell beads encircled their necks, and around their waists were belts heavily loaded with the same material. Their head-dresses were more showy than those of the men. The head was encircled with a bandeau of otters’ or beavers’ fur, to which were attached short wires standing out in all directions, with glass or shell beads strung on them, and at the tips little feather flags and quail plumes. Surmounting all was a pyramidal plume of feathers, black, gray, and scarlet, the top generally 

being a bright scarlet bunch, waving and tossing very beautifully. All these combined gave their heads a very brilliant and spangled appearance.

The first day the dance was slow and funereal, in honor of the Yo-kaí-a chief who died a short time before. The music was mournful and simple, being a monotonous chant in which only two tones were used, accompanied with a rattling of split sticks and stamping on a hollow slab. The second day the dance was more lively on the part of the men, the music was better, employing airs which had a greater range of tune, and the women generally joined in the chorus. The dress of the women was not so beautiful, as they appeared in ordinary calico. The third day, if observed in accordance with Indian custom, the dancing was still more lively and the proceedings more gay, just as the coming home from a Christian funeral is apt to be much more jolly than the going out.

A Yo-kaí-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-kaí-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 static swaying of the body.

Chickasaw Indian Burial Ceremony

Native American Chickasaw Indian Burials

Chickasaw Indian Burial 

      Captain Bernard Romans says that the Chickasaws bury their dead almost the moment the breath is out of the body, in‘ the very spot under the couch in which the deceased died, and the nearest relatives mourn over it with woeful lamentations. The mourning continues every evening and morning during a whole year. When one of the Choctaws (lies, a stage is erected, and the corpse is laid on it and covered with a bear skin; if it be that of a man of note, it is decorated, and the poles painted red with vermilion and bear’s oil; if that of a child, it is put upon stakes, set across. The relatives the come  and weep, asking many questions of the corpse, such as, why he left them! Did not his wife serve him well? Was he not contented with his children! Had he not come enough’! Did not his land produce sufiicient of everything’! Was he afraid of his enemies? etc., and this accompanied by loud howlings; the women are there constantly, and sometimes with the corrupted air and heat of the sun, faint, so as to oblige the by-standers to carry them home; the men also mourn in the same manner, but in the night or at other times when they are least likely to be discovered. The stage is fenced round with poles; it remains thus a certain time, but not a fixed period; this is sometimes extended to three or four months, but seldom more than half that time. Old men, who wear very long nails on the thumb, fore, and middle finger of each hand, as a distinguishing badge, constantly travel through the nation, that one of them may acquaint those concerned, of the expiration of this period, which is according to their own fancy; the day being come, the friends and relatives’ ‘assemble near the stage, a fire is made, and the venerable operator, after the body is taken down, with his nails tears the remaining flesh off the bones, and throws it with the entrails into the fire, where it is consumed; then he scrapes the bones and burns the scrapings. The head being painted red with Vermilion is put, with _ the rest of the bones, into a chest (which for a chief is also made red), and deposited in the loft of a hut built for that purpose, and called the bone-house; each town has one of these. After remaining here one year or thereabouts, if the deceased was a man of any note, they take the chest down, and in an assembly of relatives and friends, they weep once more over him, refresh the color of the head, repaint the box, and then consign him to lasting oblivion. An enemy or anyone who commits suicide is buried under the earth as one to be directly forgotten, and unworthy of the above-mentioned obsequies and mourning.’

Iroquois Indian Charnel Houses of the Dead and Burial Mounds

Iroquois Indian Charnel Houses of the Dead and Burial Mounds

Iroquois burial mound in northern Indiana.  Many of these mounds held many skeletal remains that is indicative of  a charnel house for the dead. Indiana archaeologists continue to desecrate these ancient Iroquois holy sites.

     To this custom, which is not confined to the Iroquois, is doubtless to be ascribed the burrows and bone-mounds which have been found in such numbers in various parts of the country. On opening these mounds the skeletons are usually found arranged in horizontal layers, a conical pyramid, those in each layer radiating from a common center. In other cases they are found placed promiscuously.

This type of spoked burial is common within the burial mounds from northern Indiana, east to New York. Despite the overwhelming evidence that these burials are Iroquois, archaeologist refuse to acknowledge the fact in order circumvent the Native American Graves Protection Act of 1993. Iroquois burial mounds are now the source of grants for university summer school digs.

Dr. D. G. Brinton likewise gives an account of the interment of collected bones:

East of the Mississippi nearly every nation was accustomed at stated periods—usually once in eight or ten years—to collect and clean the osseous remains of those of its number who had died in the intervening time, and inter them in one common sepulcher, lined with choice furs, and marked with a mound of wood, stone, or earth. Such is the origin of those immense tumuli filed with the mortal remains of nations and generations, which the antiquary, with irreverent curiosity, so frequently chances upon in all portions of our territory. Throughout Central America the same usage obtained in various localities, as early writers and existing monuments abundantly testify. Instead of interring the bones, were they those of some distinguished chieftain, they were deposited in the temples or the council-houses, usually in small chests of canes or splints. Such were the charnel-houses which the historians of De Soto’s expedition so often mention, and these are the “arks” Adair and other authors who have sought to trace the decent of the Indians from the Jews have likened to that which the ancient Israelites bore with them in their migration.

Choctaw Indian Burial Ceremony and Mounds

Choctaw Indian Burial Ceremony and Mounds

     The Choctaws pay their last duties and respect to the deceased in a very different manner. As soon as a person is dead, they erect a scaffold 18 or 20 feet high in a grove adjacent to the town, where they lay the corps, lightly covered with a mantle; here it is suffered to remain, visited and protected by the friends and relations, until the flesh becomes putrid, so as easily to part from the bones; then undertakers, who make it their business, carefully strip the flesh from the bones, wash and cleanse them, and when dry and purified by the air, having provided a curiously-wrought chest or coffin, fabricated of bones and splints, they place all the bones therein, which is deposited in the bone-house, a building erected for that purpose in every town; and when this house is full a general solemn funeral takes place; when the nearest kindred or friends of the deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone-house, take up the respective coffins, and, following one another in order of seniority, the nearest relations and connections attending their respective corps, and the multitude following after them, all as one family, with united voice of alternate allelujah and lamentation, slowly proceeding on to the place of general interment, when they place the coffins in order, forming a pyramid; and, lastly, cover all over with earth, which raises a conical hill or mount; when they return to town in order of solemn procession, concluding the day with a festival, which is called the feast of the dead.

Morgan also alludes to this mode of burial:

The body of the deceased was exposed upon a bark scaffolding erected upon poles or secured upon the limbs of trees, where it was left to waste to a skeleton. After this had been effected by the process of decomposition in the open air, the bones were removed either to the former house of the deceased, or to a small bark house by its side, prepared for their reception. In this manner the skeletons of the whole family were preserved from generation to generation by the filial or parental affection of the living. After the lapse of a number of years, or in a season of public insecurity, or on the eve of abandoning a settlement, it was customary to collect these skeletons from the whole community around and consign them to a common resting-place.

The Mourning Customs of the Dakota Sioux

The Mourning Customs of the Dakota Sioux

The mourning customs of the Dakotas, though few of them appear to be of universal observance, cover considerable ground. The hair, never cut under other circumstances, is cropped off even with the neck, and the top of the head and forehead, and sometimes nearly the whole body, are smeared with a species of white earth resembling chalk, moistened with water. The lodge, teepee, and all the family possessions except the few shabby articles of apparel worn by the mourners, are given away and the family left destitute. Thus far the custom is universal or nearly so. The wives, mother, and sisters of a deceased man, on the first, second, or third day after the funeral, frequently throw off their moccasins and leggings and gash their legs with their butcher-knives, and march through the camp and to the place of burial with bare and bleeding extremities, while they chant or wail their dismal songs of mourning. The men likewise often gash themselves in many places, and usually seek the solitude of the higher point on the distant prairie, where they remain fasting, smoking, and wailing out their lamentations for two or three days. A chief who had lost a brother once came to me after three or four days of mourning in solitude almost exhausted from hunger and bodily anguish. He had gashed the outer side of both lower extremities at intervals of a few inches all the way from the ankles to the top of the hips. His wounds had inflamed from exposure, and were suppurating freely. He assured me that he had not slept for several days or nights. I dressed his wounds with a soothing ointment, and gave him a full dose of an effective anodyne, after which he slept long and refreshingly, and awoke to express his gratitude and shake my hand in a very cordial and sincere manner. When these harsher inflictions are not resorted to, the mourners usually repair daily for a few days to the place of burial, toward the hour of sunset, and chant their grief until it is apparently assuaged by its own expression. This is rarely kept up for more than four or five days, but is occasionally resorted to, at intervals, for weeks, or even months, according to the mood of the bereft. I have seen few things in life so touching as the spectacle of an old father going daily to the grave of his child, while the shadows are lengthening, and pouring out his grief in wails that would move a demon, until his figure melts with the gray twilight, when, silent and solemn, he returns to his desolate family. The weird effect of this observance is sometimes heightened, when the deceased was a grown-up son, by the old man kindling a little fire near the head of the scaffold, and varying his lamentations with smoking in silence. The foregoing is drawn from my memory of personal observances during a period of more than six years’ constant intercourse with several subdivisions of the Dakota Indians. There may be much which memory has failed to recall upon a brief consideration.

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Blackfeet Indian Tree-Burials

Blackfeet Indian Tree-Burials

John Young, Indian agent at the Blackfeet Agency, Montana, sends the following account of tree-burial among this tribe:

Their manner of burial has always been (until recently) to inclose the dead body in robes or blankets, the best owned by the departed, closely sewed up, and then, if a male or chief, fasten in the branches of a tree so high as to be beyond the reach of wolves, and then left to slowly waste in the dry winds. If the body was that of a squaw or child, it was thrown into the underbrush or jungle, where it soon became the prey of the wild animals. The weapons, pipes, &c., of men were inclosed, and the small toys of children with them. The ceremonies were equally barbarous, the relatives cutting off, according to the depth of their grief, one or more joints of the fingers, divesting themselves of clothing even in the coldest weather, and filling the air with their lamentations. All the sewing up and burial process was conducted by the squaws, as the men would not touch nor remain in proximity to a dead body.

Native Americans Reverence for the Dead

Native Americans Reverence for the Dead

Human Bones. — Among certain Native Americans the bones of the de- 
ceased are preserved with a peculiar religious care, and considered sacred. 
The Cha'hta formerly had special men, whose nails had grown long, ap- 
pointed to disinter bodies buried for several months or a year, to scratch 
off with their hands the flesh still adhering, and then to deposit the bones, 
done up in a new mat, in the bone-house, of which there was one in every 
town. How far this custom extended through North America is not easy 
to state, but we find it among the Santees, Nanticokes, Mohawks, and, west 
of the Mississippi River, among the Shetimashas of Southern Louisiana.