212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



happy hunting ground. They believed that the smoke was the 

 transferring agent between life here and there. When these In- 

 dians first saw the palefaces, as they called the white men, they 

 thought them some of their dead returned to them in a new guise, 

 and one that they by no means liked. After this time they began 

 to bury their dead, explaining the change of custom by saying: 

 " Indians go long way ; no more smoke take 'em. Indians have 

 to carry bow, arrows, skins, eberyting ; take long time, no more 

 want to come back." 



The body was prepared for burial while still warm in the fol- 

 lowing manner : First, the knees were tied close to the chest and 

 the head jDressed down between them ; the whole body was then 

 compressed into as small and as round a form as possible, tied 

 securely with buckskin string, wrapped in skins, and tied again. 

 It was then buried in a large, round hole, the face turned upward, 

 as were also the feet. The possessions were heaped upon the body 

 and buried with it. After the Indians had begun to own horses 

 and dogs, these were shot on the graves of their masters and their 

 bodies left there. 



This tribe now prepare their dead and bury them as nearly 

 like the white people as possible, even neglecting to give them 

 the accumulated property of this life. 



Since obtaining the above information I have made a number 

 of excavations in their old burial places and find that no particu- 

 lar position for placing the body could have been observed. The 

 head sometimes faced the east, but just as often the west, and in 

 several instances it faced upward and downward. These Indians 

 did not make mounds, but selected soft soil for their graves. The 

 bodies were buried from two to three feet deep ; earth and some- 

 times stones were heaped up until something resembling a mound 

 was formed. This, however, only depended upon the amount of 

 work the living were willing to do for the dead. 



They had many customs of mourning. The most interesting 

 one was that adopted by a bereaved wife or mother. The hair 

 of the mourner would be burned from the head, a sacrifice which 

 meant as much to her as the laying away of bright colors means 

 to us, and the ashes mixed with charcoal and pitch. With this 

 mixture her cheeks, chin, and forehead would be streaked, and 

 this emblem of mourning would be worn for many weeks. At 

 the time of burial every Indian was expected to moan or howl, 

 while many of them would writhe about on the ground and utter 

 most unearthly shrieks. For a certain number of days after they 

 had burned or buried their dead, the chief mourners would go to 

 the grave a half hour before sunrise and, looking toward the spot 

 wher& the sun was to appear, would express their sorrow in cries 

 and moans until the golden rays fell about their world, when they 



