610 THE PAINTING OF HUMAN BONES AMONG THE INDIANS. 



The deposit of pig-inents, particularly of oclier, in the shape of 

 paint, with the bodies of warriors, and especially of chiefs, was 

 ver}^ prevalent. Red paint was one of the Indian's necessities, and, 

 with some of his other possessions, was buried with him as a part 

 of his equipment for the future world or his journey thither. 

 Lafitau (vol. ii, 8, p. 413), in referring to the articles generally 

 interred with the body of an Indian, mentions, among other things, 

 " a quantity of oil and some color with which to paint himself." 

 Loskiel (vol. ii, p. 120) tells us that the Indians formerly "used 

 to put a tobacco pouch, knife, tinder box. tobacco and pipe, bow and 

 arrows (or a gun, powder, and shot), skins and cloth for clothes, 

 paint, a small bag of Indian corn or dried bilberries, sometimes the 

 kettle, hatchet, and other furniture of the deceased into the grave, 

 supposing that the departed spirits would have the same wants and 

 occupations in the land of souls as they had in this world. But this 

 custom," Loskiel says, " is now (in 1704) almost entirely abolished in 

 the country of the DelaAvares and Iroquois." 



Among the Iluroub, according to Sagard (Histoire du Canada, 

 Paris, 1()3G, vol. iii, p. 647), some paint was buried with the women, 

 in order that in the other world they had enough to paint their robes 

 with. Quantities of red ocher have been found in ancient Maine 

 graves by Mr. C. C. Willoughby, of the Peabody Museum. Rev. J. 

 M. Spainhour, in 1871, found in a mound on St. Johns River, North 

 Carolina, three skeletons, and with each a quantity of red pigment 

 (Yarrow, p. 27.) According to Elliott (vol. i, GO) and Young (p. 

 142), " the first Europeans who came to Cape Cod found there in an 

 Indian grave nice matting, a bow, a decorated and painted board, and 

 tAvo bundles of red powder, in which lay the bones of the buried." 



Mr. Moorehead found red ocher, and in a few instances also yellow 

 and white mineral paints, heaped, as he expresses it, on or near the 

 hands or other parts of the body, in earth mounds in sevei'al parts 

 of Ohio. Lewis and Clark (vol. i, p. 239) mention having found 

 some red and blue paint with the cadaver of an Assiniboin female. 

 Mr. II. I. Smith, of the American Museum of Natui'al History, 

 unearthed a skeleton at Saginaw. Mich., which was covered with red 

 pigment, the surrounding soil being of a totally different character. 

 Dr. J. Walter Eewkes found vessels containing " yellow ocher, ses- 

 (uiioxide of ii'on, green cop]5er carbonate, and micaceous hematite " 

 in what was apparently the burial of a ]:)riest, at Awatobi, a ruin of 

 a former pueblo the base of what was formerly the first mesa of the 

 Hopi Indians, in northei'u Arizona, and he found similar pigments 

 in graves at Sikyatki, another ruin in the same region; and examples 

 of a similar nature could be multiplied. 



Judging from the references to Indian mortuary customs made by 

 various authors, there Avere apparently a large number of instances 



