Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1884 — A Crow Indian Burial Platform. [ARTICLE]

A Crow Indian Burial Platform.

The influence of missionaries and the agents has caused the Crows of Montana to pretty much abandon their old custom of wrapping their heads up in blankets and buffalo-robes and placing them on rude scaffolding, and to adopt the civilized inode of burying them in the ground. Many of the old platforms still remain, however. The traveler usually gives them a wide berth on the windward side. When the railroad was built across the reservation the line ran right through one of these curious cemeteries, on which was deposited over a Score of bodies in all stages of decomposition, and the workmen were obliged to tarn grave-diggers and dispose of the dreadful mass before the road could be graded. Undoubtedly the custom of disposing of the dead originated' in the practical motive of putting them oat of reach of the wolves, which dig up bodies buried no deeper than Indians, with their rude tools, could readily place them. Mobe destruction. A Montana firm has contracted to deliver 1,000 pairs of buffalo horns. \