YARROW. ] MUMMIES—VIRGINIA. 131 
From the statements of the older writers on North American Indians, 
it appears that mummifying was resorted to, among certain tribes of 
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida, especially for people of distinction, 
the process in Virginia for the kings, according to Beverly,* being as 
follows: 
The Indians are religious in preserving the Corpses of their Kings and Rulers after 
Death, which they order in the following manner: First, they neatly flay off the Skin 
as entire as they can, slitting it only in the Back; then they pick all the Flesh off 
from the Bones as clean as possible, leaving the Sinews fastned to the Bones, that 
they may preserve the Joints together; then they dry the Bones in the Sun, and put 
them into the Skin again, which in the mean time has been kept from drying or 
shrinking ; when the Bones are placed right in the Skin, they nicely fill up the Vacu- 
ities, with a very fine white Sand. After this they sew up the Skin again, and the 
Body looks as if the Flesh had not been removed. They take care to keep the Skin 
from shrinking, by the help of a little Oil or Grease, which saves it also from Corrup- 
tion. The Skin being thus prepar’d, they lay it in an apartment for that purpose, 
upon a large Shelf rais’d above the Floor. This Shelf is spread with Mats, for the 
Corpse to rest easy on, and skreened with the same, to keep it from the Dust. The 
Flesh they lay upon Hurdles in the Sun to dry, and when itis thoroughly dried, it is 
sewed up ina Basket, and set at the Feet of the Corpse, to which it belongs. Inthis place 
also they set up a Quioccos, or Idol, which they believe will be a Guard to the Corpse. 
Here Night and Day one or the other of the Priests must give his Attendance, to take 
care of the dead Bodies. So great an Honour and Veneration have these ignorant 
and unpolisht People for their Princes even after they are dead. 
It should be added that, in the writer’s opinion, this account and others 
like it are somewhat apocryphal, and it has been copied and recopied 
a score of times. 
According to Pinkerton,+ who took the account from Smith’s Virginia, 
the Werowance of Virginia preserved their dead as follows : 
In their Temples they have his [their chief God, the Devil’s] image euill favouredly 
caryed, and then painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and covered 
with a skin, in such manner as the deformitie may well suit with such aGod. By him 
is commonly the sepulchre of their Kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then dried 
upon hurdles till they be very dry, and so about the most of their ioynts and necke 
they hang bracelets, or chaines of copper, pearle, and such like, as they vse to wear. 
Their inwards they stuffe with copper beads, hatchets, and such trash. Then lappe 
they them very carefully in white skins, and so rowle them in mats for their winding- 
sheets. And in the Tombe, which is an arch made of mats, they lay them orderly. 
What remaineth of this kind of wealth their Kings have, they set at their feet in 
baskets. These temples and bodies are kept by their Priests. 
For their ordinary burials, they dig a deepe hole in the earth with sharpe stakes, 
and the corpse being lapped in skins and mats with their jewels they lay them vpon 
stickes in the ground, and so cover them with earth. The buriale ended, the women 
being painted all their faces with blacke cole and oyle doe sit twenty-foure houres in 
the houses mourning and lamenting by turnes with such yelling and howling as may 
expresse their great passions. * * * 
Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods there are three great houses 
filled with images of their Kings and devils and the tombes of their predecessors. 
Those houses are near sixty feet in length, built harbourwise after their building. 
This place they count so holey as that but the priests and Kings dare come into them; 
nor the savages dare not go up the river in boates by it, but that they solemnly cast 
* Hist. of Virginia, 1722, p. 185. ° 
t Collection of Voyages, 1812, vol. xiii, p. 39. 
