Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1886 — Indian Death Customs. [ARTICLE]

Indian Death Customs.

Among the North American tribes there are seven modes of burial, viz., by inhumation; by embalmment; by deposition of remains in urns; by surface burial (the remains being placed in hollow trees or logs, pens, or simply covered with earth, or bark, or rocks forming cairns); by cremation; by aerial sepulture (the bodies being left in lodges, houses, cabins, tents, deposited on scaffolds or trees, in boxes or canoes, supported on scaffolds or posts, or placed on the ground,) and by aquatic burial beneath the water, or in canoes turned adrift. Each tribe follows its own course, according to the established custom, The first form of burial, that is, of interment in the ground, ■was customary among the Mohawks of New York. Schoolcraft, in his history of; the Indian tribes, tells us that “the Mohawks of New York made a large round hole in which the body was placed upright, or upon its haunches, after which it was covered with timber to support the earth which they laid over it, and thereby kept the body from being pressed. They then raised the earth in a round hill over it. They always dressed the corpse in all its finery, and put wampum and other things into the grave with it; and the relations suffered not grass nor weeds to grow upon the grave, and frequently visited it and made lamentations.” The same custom prevailed among the Indians formerly inhabiting the Carolinas, but they placed the corpse in a coffin made of woven reeds or hollow canes, tied fast at both ends. After a time the body is taken up, the bones cleaned, and deposited in an ossuary, called the quiogozon. The custom of tying,up the corpse likewise prevails among the Yumanas of South America, who “bury their dead bent double, with faces looking toward the heavenly region of the sunrise, the home of their great good deity, who they trust will take their souls with him to his dwelling. On the other hand, the Peruvian custom was to place the dead huddled up in a sitting posture, and with faces turned to the west.” With regard to burying in the ground, Tylor informs us that it is customary among the Winnebagoes of North America to bury a man “sitting up to the breast in a hole in the ground, looking westward; or graves are dug east and west, and the bodies laid in them with the head eastward, with the motive that they may look toward the happy land in the west.”