18 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



others of our Indian nations, used formerly to shoot all the live stock that belongeil to the deceased, 

 soon after the interment of the corpse; not that they might accompany and wait upon the dead, but 

 from a narrovv-huarted avaricious principle. When any of them die at a distance, if the company 

 be not pursued by an enemy, they place the corpse on a scaffold, covered with notched logs to secure 

 it from bein"- torn by wild beasts or birds of prey. When they imagine the flesh is consumed, and 

 the bones are tlioroughly dried, they return to the place, bring them home, and inter them in a very 

 solemn niiiniier. They will not associate with us when we are burying any of our people who die in 

 their land. And they are not willing we should join with them while they are performing this kindred 

 duty to theirs. Upon which account, though I have lived among them in the raging time of the 

 smallpox, even of the confluent sort, I never saw but one buried, who was ai great favorite of the 

 English, and chieftain of Ooeam, as formerly described. 



" Notwithstanding the North American Indians, like the South Americans, inter the whole riches 

 of the deceased with him, and so make his corpse and the grave heirs of all, they never give them 

 the least disturbance ; even a blood-thirsty enemy will not despoil the dead. The grave proves an 

 asylum, and a sure place of rest to the sleeping person, till at some certain time, according to their 

 opinion, he rises again to inherit his favorite place; unless the covetous or curious hand of some 

 foreigner should break through his sacred bounds. This custom of burying the dead person's 

 treasures with him has entirely swallowed up their medals and other monuments of antiquity, without 

 any probability of recovering them. 



" The Indians use the same ceremonies over the bones of their dead as if they were covered with their 

 former flesh. It is but a few days since I saw some return with the bones of nine of their people, 

 who had been two months before killed by the enemy. They were tied in white deer skins separately ; 

 and when carried by the door of one of the houses of their family, they were laid down opposite to 

 it, till the female relatives convened, with flowing hair, and wept over them for half an hour. Then 

 they carried them home to their magazines of mortality, wept over them again, and buried them 

 with the usual solemnities ; putting their valuable effects in along with them. The chieftain carried 

 twelve short sticks tied together, in the form of a polygon. The sticks were only peeled, without 

 any paintings ; but there were swans' feathers tied to each corner. They called that frame, 

 Terukpe toboh, 'a white circle,' and placed it over the door, while the women were weeping over 

 the bones. 



"When any of the people die at home, they wash and anoint the corpse, and soon bring it out of 

 doors, for fear of pollution ; thence they place it opposite to the door, on the skins of wild beasts, in a 

 sitting posture, as if looking into the door of the winter house, westward, sufliciently supported by all 

 the movable goods of the deceased ; after a short culogium and space of mourning, they carry the 

 body three tinrts around the house in which it is to be interred, stopping half a minute each time, at 

 the place where they began the circle, while the religious man of the deceased person's family, who 

 goes before the hearse, says each time Yah, short and with a bass voice, and then invokes on a tenor 

 key, Yu, which, at the same time, is likewi.se sung by all the procession, as long as one breath allows. 

 Again he strikes up, on a sharp treble key, the feminine note. He, which in like manner is taken up 

 and continued by the rest; then all of them suddenly strike off in the solemn chorus and sacred 

 invocation, by saying, in a low key, W&h ; which constitute the divine essential name Yoh ewoh. 



"After they had celebrated these funeral rites of the chieftain, they laid the cor|ise in its tomb, in 

 a sitting posture, with its face towards the east, its head anointed with bear's oil, and its face 

 painted red, but not streaked with black, because that is a constant emblem of war and death. He 

 was dressed in his finest apparel, having his gun and pouch, and trusty hickory bow, with a young 

 panther's skin full of arrows along side of him, and every other useful thing he had been possessed 

 of. His tomb was clean inside, and covered with thick logs so as to bear several tiers of cypress 

 bark and such a quantity of clay as would confine the putrid smell, and be on a level with the rest 

 of the floor. They often sleep over these tombs together ; which with the loud wailing of the women 

 at the dusk of the evening and dawn of the day, on benches close by the tombs, aw^ake the memory 

 of their relations. 



" The Choktahs having placed the dead on a scafi'old stockaded ronnd, at the distance of twelve 

 yards from the house, opposite to the door, the whole family convene there at the beginning of the 

 fourth moon after the interment, to lament and feast together. After wailing a while on the mourning 



