MODES OF BURIAL. 21 



themselves in this manner. They apply sometimes two years beforehand to secure 

 this favor ; and the persons who obtain it must themselves make the cord with 

 which they are to be strangled. 



They appear on their scafl'olds dressed in their richest habits, each holding in his 

 right hand a large shell. Their nearest relative stands on their right-hand side, 

 holding under the left arm the cord which is to serve for the execution, and in the 

 right hand a fighting club. From time to time these nearest relatives make the cry 

 of death ; and at this cry, the fourteen victims descend from their scaffolds, and go 

 and dance together, in the middle of the open space which is before the temple, and 

 before the cabin of the deceased chief During some days preceding the execution, 

 the victims are treated with great respect ; they have each five servants, and their 

 faces are painted red. Some add that during the eight days which precede their 

 death, they wear a red ribbon round one of their legs ; and that, during this time, 

 everybody strives who shall be the first to feast them. Howe.ver that may be, on 

 the occasion now referred to, the fathers and mothers who had strangled their 

 children, took them np in their hands and ranged themselves on both sides of the 

 cabin. The fourteen persons who were also destined to die placed themselves in 

 the same manner, and were followed by the relatives and friends of the deceased, 

 all in mourning ; that is to say, with their hair cut off. They made the air resound 

 with such frightful cries that one would have said that all the devils in hell were 

 come to howl in the place. This was followed by the dances of those who were 

 to die, and by the songs of the relatives of the female chief. 



At last they began the procession. The fathers and mothers who carried the 

 dead children appeared first, marching two and two immediately before the bier, 

 on which was the body of the female chief carried by four men on their 

 shoulders. All the others came after in the same order as tlie first. At every ten 

 paces the fathers and mothers let the children fall upon the ground. Those who 

 carried the bier walked upon them ; so that, when the procession arrived at the 

 temple, these little bodies were all crushed. 



While they were burying the body of the female chief in the temple, they un- 

 dressed the fourteen persons who were to die. They made them sit on the ground 

 before the door, each liaving two savages by him, one of whom sat on his knees, and 

 the other held his arms behind. Then they put a cord about his neck and covered 

 his head with a roebuck's skin. They made him swallow three pills of tobacco, 

 and drink a cup of water ; the relations of the female chief then drew the two ends 

 of the cord, singing till he was strangled ; after which they threw all the carcasses 

 into the same pit, which they covered with earth. When the great chief dies, if 

 his nurse is living, she must die also.-^ 



John Lawson relates, that when one dies among the Santee Indians, who 

 were governed by a despotic ruler, a mole or pyramid of earth is raised, the 

 surface thereof being worked very smooth and even, sometimes higher or lower, 

 according to the dignity of the person whose monument it is. On the top of 



' Journal cl'un Toynge fait par ordre fin Eoi clans I'Amcriqne Soptentrionalo, adresse a Madame 

 la Duchesse de Lesdisuieres, par le P. De Chai'levoix, Tome Sixieiiie. See also Historical Collec- 

 tions of Louisiana, Part iii, pp. 1G3-5. 



