YARROW. | CREMATION—CALIFORNIA. 147 
already mentioned on a preceding page, the cruel manner in which the 
widow is treated seems to be a modification of the Hindoo suttee, but, if 
the account be true, it would appear that death might be preferable to 
such torments. 
It is interesting to note that in Corsica, as late as 1743, if a husband 
died, women threw themselves upon the widow and beat her severely. 
Bruhier quaintly remarks that this custom obliged women to take good 
care of their husbands. 
George Gibbs, in Schooleraft,* states that among the Indians of Clear 
Lake, California, ‘‘ the body is consumed upon a scaffold built over a 
hole, into which the ashes are thrown and covered.” 
According to Stephen Powers, +t cremation was common among the 
Se-nél of California. He thus relates it: 
The dead are mostly burned. Mr. Willard described to me a scene of incremation 
that he once witnessed, which was frightful for its exhibitions of fanatic frenzy and 
infatuation. The corpse was that of a wealthy chieftain, and as he lay upon the 
funeral pyre they placed in his mouth two gold twenties, and other smaller coins in 
his ears and hands, on his breast, &c., besides all his finery, his feather mantles, 
plumes, clothing, shell money, his fancy bows, painted arrows, &c. When the torch 
was applied they set up a mournful ululation, chanting and dancing about him, 
gradually working themselves into a wild and ecstatic raving, which seemed almost 
a demoniacal possession, leaping, howling, lacerating their flesh. Many seemed to 
lose all self-control. The younger English-speaking Indians generally lend themselves 
charily to such superstitious work, especially if American spectators are present, 
but even they were carried away by the old contagious frenzy of their race. One 
stripped off a broadcloth coat, quite new and fine, and ran frantically yelling and 
cast it upon the blazing pile. Another rushed up, and was about to throw on a pile 
of California blankets, when a white man, to test his sincerity, offered him $16 for 
them, jingling the bright coins before his eyes, but the savage (for such he had be- 
come again for the moment), otherwise so avaricious, hurled him away with a yell 
of execration and ran and threw his offering into the flames. Squaws, even more 
frenzied, wildly flung upon the pyre all they had in the world—their dearest orna- 
ments, their gaudiest dresses, their strings of glittering shells. Screaming, wailing, 
tearing their hair, beating their breasts in their mad and insensate infatuation, some 
of them would have cast themselves bodily into the flaming ruins and perished with 
the chief had they not been restrained by their companions. Then the bright, swift 
flames, with their hot tongues, licked this ‘‘cold obstruction” into chemic change, 
and the once ‘‘ delighted spirit” of the savage was borne up. * * * 
It seems as if the savage shared in Shakspeare’s shudder at the thought of rotting 
in the dismal grave, for it is the one passion of his superstition to think of the soul, 
of his departed freind set free and purified by the swift purging heat of the flames 
not dragged down to be clogged and bound in the mouldering body, but borne up 
in the soft, warm chariots of the smoke toward the beautiful sun, to bask in his 
warmth and light, and then to fly away to the Happy Western Land. What wonder 
if the Indian shrinks with unspeakable herror from the thought of burying his friend’s 
soul !—of pressing and ramming down with pitiless clods that inner something which 
once took such delight in the sweet light of the sun! What wonderifittakes years to 
persuade him to do otherwise and follow ourcustom! What wonder if eventhen he does 
it with sad fears and misgivings! Why not let him keep hiscustom! In the gorgeous 
* Hist. Indian Tribes of the United States, 1853, part iii, p. 112. 
tContsib. to N. A. Ethunol., 1877, vol. iii, p. 169. 
