lawson's history 43 



bear's oil. When it is so done, tliey cover it very 

 exactly over with bark of the pine, or cypress tree, 

 to prevent any rain to fall upon it, sweeping the 

 ground very clean all about it. Some of his 

 nearest of kin brings all the temporal estate he 

 was possessed of at his death, as guns, bows and 

 arrows, beads, feathers, match coat, &c. This re- 

 lation is the chief mourner, being clad in moss 

 and a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty 

 for three or four days, his face being black with 

 smoke of pitch, pine mingled with bear's oil*. All 

 the while he tells the dead man's relations, and 

 the rest of the spectators, who that dead person 

 was, and of the great feats performed in his life- 

 time ; ' all what he speaks, tending to the praise 

 of the defunct. As soon as the flesh grows mel- 

 low and will cleave from the bone, they get it off 

 and burn it, making all the bones very clean, 

 then annoint them with the ingredients aforesaid, 

 wrapping up the skull (very carefully) in a cloth 

 artificially woven of possom's hair. (These In- 

 dians make girdles, sashes, garters, &c., after the 

 same manner.) The bones they carefully preserve 

 in a wooden box, every year oiling and cleansing 

 them. By these means preserve them for many 

 ages, that you may see an Indian in possession of 

 the bones of his grand-father, or some of liis rela- 

 tions of a larger antiquity. The}^ liave other sorts of 

 toombs, as where an Indian is slain, in that very 

 place they make a heap of stones, (or sticks where 

 stones are not to be found) to this niemorial, every 



