24 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



a number of willow rods are placed, just strong enough to support the body, 

 which is laid upon them, on its back, with its feet carefully turned towards the 

 rising sun. A great number of these bodies are to be seen, arranged exactly in a 

 similar manner ; but, in some instances, the remains of a chief or of a medicine 

 man may have a few yards of scarlet or blue cloth spread over them as a mark of 

 public respect and esteem. Hundreds of these bodies repose in this manner at 

 these places, which the Indians call " the villages of the dead." Every day in the 

 year, fathers, mothers, wives, and children may be seen lying under the scaffolds, 

 prostrated upon the ground with their faces in the dust, howling forth incessantly 

 the most piteous and heart-broken cries and lamentations, tearing their hair, 

 cutting their flesh with sharp knives, and doing other penance to appease the 

 spirits of the dead, whose departure they attribute to some sin or omission of their 

 own, for which they sometimes inflict the most excruciating self-torture. When 

 the scaffolds on which the bodies have rested decay and fall to the ground, the 

 nearest relatives, having buried the rest of the bones, take the skulls, which are 

 perfectly bleached and purified, and place them in circles of a hundred or more, 

 upon the prairie, at equal distances, about eight or nine inches from one another, 

 with the faces all looking to the centre ; here they are religiously protected and 

 preserved in their precise positions from year to year, as objects of religious and 

 affectionate veneration. There are often several of these circles, or Golgothas, to- 

 gether, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, and in the centre of each is a small mound 

 three feet high, on which uniformly rest two skulls of buffalos (a male and a female). 

 In the centre of the little mound is erected a medicine j^ole, about twenty feet 

 high, supporting many articles of mystery and superstition, which were supposed 

 to have the power of guarding this sacred arrangement. Each one of these 

 skulls is placed upon a bunch of wild sage, which has been pulled and plaocd under 

 it ; and each one knows the skull of a relative by some mark or resemblance, as 

 they are daily visited and have vessels filled with food set before them. When 

 the bunches of wild sage decay, they are carefully renewed. There is scarcely an 

 hour, on a pleasant day, in which a woman may not be seen sitting or lying by the 

 skull of her child or husband, talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing 

 language.^ 



According to this author the Omahas deposit their dead in the trunks and in 

 the branches of trees, enveloped in skins, and suspend a wooden dish near the head 

 of the corpse ; probably for enabling it to dip up water to quench its thirst on the 

 long journey, upon which they one and all expect to enter after death. These 

 corpses are so numerous along the banks of the river, that in some places a dozen 

 or more of them may be seen at one view. 



The Sioux often deposit their dead in trees and on scaffolds, but most generally 

 bury them on the tops of bluffs or near the villages, where they often split out staves 

 and drive them into the ground, around the grave, to protect it from dogs and wild 

 animals. 



' Catlin's North American Indians, vol. i, pp. 89-91. 



