152 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
in the earth, with the exception of his head, which was left protruding above the 
surface. As no trace of the cranium could be found, it seems probable that the head 
had either been burned or severed from the body and removed, or else left a prey to 
ravenous birds. The skeleton, which would have measured fully six feet in height, 
was undoubtedly that of a man. 
Blacking the face, as is mentioned in the first account, is a custom 
known to have existed among many tribes throughout the world, but in 
some cases different earths and pigments are used as signs of mourning. 
The natives of Guinea smear a chalky substance over their bodies as an 
outward expression of grief, and it is well known that the ancient Israel- 
ites threw ashes on their heads and garments. Placing food with the 
corpse or in its mouth, and money in the hand, finds its analogue in the 
custom of the ancient Romans, who, some time before interment, placed 
a piece of money in the corpse’s mouth, which was thought to be Charon’s 
fare for wafting the departed soul over the Infernal River. Besides 
this, the corpse’s mouth was furnished with a certain cake, composed of 
flour, honey, &c. This was designed to appease the fury of Cerberus, 
the infernal doorkeeper, and to procure a safe and quiet entrance. These 
examples are curious coincidences, if nothing more. 
AERIAL SEPULTURE. 
LODGE-BURTAL, 
Our attention should next be turned to sepulture above the ground, 
including lodge, house, box, scaffold, tree, and canoe burial, and the first 
example which may be given is that cf burial in lodges, which is by no 
means common. The description which follows is by Stansbury,* and 
relates to the Sioux: 
I put on my moccasins, and, displaying my wet shirt like a flag to the wind, we 
proceeded to the lodges which had attracted our curiosity. There were five of them 
pitched upon the open prairie, and in them we found the bodies of nine Sioux laid out 
upon the ground, wrapped in their robes of buffalo-skin, with their saddles, spears, 
camp-kettles, and all their accoutrements piled up around them. Some lodges con- 
tained three, others only one body, all of which were more or less in a state of decom- 
position. A short distance apart from these was one lodge which, though small, 
seemed of rather superior pretensions, and was evidently pitched with great care. It 
contained the body of a young Indian girl of sixteen or eighteen years, with a coun- 
tenance presenting quite an agreeable expression; she was richly dressed in leggins 
of fine scarlet cloth elaborately ornamented; a new pair of moccasins, beautifully em- 
broidered with porcupine quills, was on her feet, and her body was wrapped in two 
superb buffalo-robes worked in like manner; she had evidently been dead but a day 
or two, and to our surprise a portion of the upper part of her person was bare, expos- 
ing the face and a part of the breast, as if the robes in which she was wrapped had by 
some means been disarranged, whereas all the other bodies were closely covered up. 
* Explorations of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, 1852, p. 43. 
