YARROW. ] SURFACE BURIAL—OJIBWAYS. 141 
I have also seen the dead bodies placed in trees. This is done by digging a trough 
out of a log, placing the body init, and covering it. I have seen several bodies in one 
tree. I think when they are disposed of in this way it is by special request, as I knew 
of an Indian woman who lived with a white family who desired her body placed in a 
tree, which was accordingly done.* Doubtless there was some peculiar superstition 
attached to this mode, though I do not remember to have heard what it was. 
Judge H. Welch? states that ‘the Sauks, Foxes, and Pottawatomies 
buried by setting the body on the ground and building a pen around it 
of sticks or logs. I think the bodies lay heads to the east.” And C. C. 
Baldwin, of Cleveland, Ohio, sends a more detailed account, as follows: 
I was some time since in Seneca County and there met Judge Welch. *~ * * In 
1824 he went with his father-in-law, Judge Gibson, to Fort Wayne. On the way they 
passed the grave of an Ottawa or Pottawatomie chief. The body Jay on the ground 
covered with notched poles. It had been there but a few days and the worms were 
crawling around the body. My special interest in the case was the accusation of 
witchcraft against a young sqguaw who was executed for killing him by her arts. In 
the Summit County mounds there were only parts of skeletons with charcoal and 
ashes, showing they had been burned. 
W. A. Bricet mentions a curious variety of surface burial not hereto- 
fore met with : 
And often had been seen, years ago, swinging from the bough of a tree, or in a ham- 
mock stretched between two trees, the infant of the Indian mother; or a few little log 
inclosures, where the bodies of adults sat upright, with all their former apparel 
wrapped about them, and their trinkets, tomahawks, &c., by their side, could be seen 
at any time for many years by the few pale-faces visiting or sojourning here. 
A method of interment so closely allied to surface burial that it may 
be considered under that head is the one employed by some of the Ojib- 
ways and Swampy Crees of Canada. A small cavity is scooped out, the 
body deposited therein, covered with a little dirt, the mound thus formed 
being covered either with split planks, poles, or birch bark. 
Prof. Henry Youle Hind, who was in charge of the Canadian Red River 
exploring expedition of 1858, has been good enough to forward to the 
Bureau of Ethnology two photographs representing this variety of grave, 
which he found 15 or 20 miles from the present town of Winnipeg, and 
they are represented in the woodcuts, Figures 8 and 9. 
*T saw the body of this woman in the tree. It was undoubtedly an exceptional 
case. When I came here (Rock Island) the bluffs on the peninsula between Mississippi 
and Rock River (three miles distant) were thickly studded with Indian grave mounds, 
showing conclusively that subterranean was the usual mode of burial. In making 
roads, streets, and digging foundations, skulls, bones, trinkets, beads, &c., in great 
numbers, were exhumed, proving that many things (according to the wealth or station 
of survivors) were deposited in the graves. In 1836 I witnessed the burial of two 
chiefs in the manner stated.—P. GREGG. 
tTract No. 50, West. Reserve and North. Ohio Hist. Soc. (1879 ?), p. 107. 
tHist. of Ft. Wayne, 1868, p. 284. 
