132 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
some piece of copper, white beads, or pocones into the river for feare their Okee should 
be offended and revenged of them. 
They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteeme quiyough- 
cosughs, when they are deade doe goe beyond the mountains towards the setting of 
the sun, and ever remain there in form of their Okee, with their hedes paynted rede 
with oyle and pocones, finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets, 
copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their predecessors. 
But the common people they suppose shall not live after deth, but rot in their graves 
like dede dogges. 
This is substantially the same account as has been given on a former 
page, the verbiage differing slightly, and the remark regarding truthful- 
ness will apply to it as well as to the other. 
Figure 1 may again be referred to as an example of the dead-house 
described. 
The Congaree or Santee Indians of South Carolina, according to Law- 
son, used a process of partial embalmment, as will be seen from the 
subjoined extract from Schoolcraft ;* but instead of laying away the 
remains in caves, placed them in boxes supported above the ground by 
crotched sticks. 
The manner of their interment is thus: A mole or pyramid of earth is raised, the 
mould thereof being worked very smooth and even, sometimes higher or lower accord- 
ing to the dignity of the person whose monument it is. On the top thereof is an 
umbrella, made ridgeways, like the roof of a house. This is supported by nine stakes 
or small posts, the grave being about 6 to 8 feet in length and 4 feet in breadth, about 
which is hung gourds, feathers, and other such like trophies, placed there by the dead 
man’s relations in respect to him in the grave. The other parts of the funeral rites are 
thus: As soon as the party is dead they lay the corpse upon a piece of bark in the sun, 
seasoning or embalming it with a small’root beaten to powder, which looks as red 
as vermillion ; the same is mixed with bear’s oil to beautify the hair. After the car- 
cass has laid a day or two in the sun they remove it and lay it upon crotches cut on 
purpose for the support thereof from the earth; then they anoint it all over with the 
aforementioned ingredients of the powder of this root and bear’s oil. When itisso done 
they cover it over very exactly with the bark or pine of the 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. Thisrelation is the chief mourner, being 
clad in moss, with a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty for three or four days, 
his face being black with the smoke of pitch pine mixed 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 lifetime, all that he speaks tending to the 
praise of the defunct. As soon as the flesh grows mellow and will cleave from the 
bone they get it off and burn it, making the bones very clean, then anoint them with 
the ingredients aforesaid, wrapping up the skull (very carefully) in a cloth artificially 
woven of opossum’s hair. The bones they carefully preserve in a wooden box, every 
year oiling and cleansing them. By these means they preserve them for many ages, 
that you may see an Indian in possession of the bones of his grandfather or some of 
his relations of a longer antiquity. They have other sorts of tombs, as when 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 memorial every Indian that passes by adds a stone to augment 
the heap in respect to the deceased hero. The Indians make a roof of light wood or 
* Hist. Ind. Tribes United States, 1854, Part IV, pp. 155 et seq. 
