98 Extracts from a MS. 'Journal. 



summer houses are built in form of our sheds. Pages 

 45 and 46. 



The Chactaws are the most civil set of Indians I 

 have yet seen. They treated us with much more 

 humanity than the , who pretend to be a Chris- 

 tian people^ They are, however, dirty, poor, and 

 very lazy : but they are very brave in war. Their 

 manner of dress is quite different from that of the 

 Northern Indians. 



When the Chactaws dispose of their dead, they 

 wrap the body in a blanket, and lay it upon a scaffold, 

 which is placed before the door of the deceased. 

 Here it must lie, until the flesh is rotten sufficiently 

 to be easily scraped from the bones. By the scaffold 

 there are placed several poles, painted red, round 

 which the friends mourn. They stand by these poles, 

 and cry, three or four times a day, over the dead body. 

 The greater the person has been, the longer the 

 mourning is continued. 



After the flesh is sufficiently rotted, they send for 

 the " Bone-pickers," who are persons expressly ap- 

 pointed for this purpose. They scrape, with their 

 nails, the flesh very clean from the bones. These are 

 put into a box, which is deposited in a house, that is 

 built for keeping the bones of the dead. In every 

 town, there is one of these houses. (See Note 4.) 



Once a year, there is a general mourning. On 

 this day, the Indians collect, and cry over the bodies 



