YARROW. | SCAFFOLD BURIAL—SIOUX. 167 
In some parts of Australia the natives, instead of consuming the body by fire, or hid- 
ing it in caves or in graves, make it a peculiarly conspicuous object. Should a tree 
grow favorably for their purpose, they will employ it as the final resting place for the 
dead body. Lying in its canoe coffin, and so covered over with leaves and grass that 
its shape is quite disguised, the body is lifted into a convenient fork of the tree and 
lashed to the boughs by native ropes. No further care is taken of it, and if in 
process of time it should be blown out of the tree, no one will take the trouble of re- 
placing it. 
Should no tree be growing in the selected spot, an artificial platform is made for the 
body, by fixing the ends of stout branches in the ground and connecting them at their 
tops by smaller horizontal branches. Such are the curious tombs which are repre- 
sented in the illustration. * * * These strange tombs are mostly placed among 
the reeds, so that nothing can be more mournful than the sound of the wind as it 
shakes the reeds below the branch in which the corpse is lying. The object of this 
aerial tomb is evident enough, namely, to protect the corpse from the dingo, or native 
dog. That the ravens and other carrion-eating birds should make a banquet upon 
the body of the dead man does not seem to trouble the survivors in the least, and it 
often happens that the traveler is told by the croak of the disturbed ravens that the 
body of a dead Australian is lying in the branches over his head. 
The aerial tombs are mostly erected for the bodies of old men who have died a natural 
death; but when a young warrior has fallen in battle the body is treated in a very 
different manner. A moderately high platform is erected, and upon this is seated the 
body of the dead warrior with the face toward the rising sun. The legs are crossed 
and the arms kept extended by means of sticks. The fat is then removed, and after 
being mixed with red ochre is rubbed over the body, which has previously been care- 
fully denuded of hair, as is done in the ceremony of initiation. The legs and arms 
are covered with zebra-like stripes of red, white, and yellow, and the weapons of the 
dead man are Jaid across his lap. 
The body being thus arranged, fires are lighted under the platform, and kept up 
for ten days or more, during the whole of which time the friends and mourners re- 
main by the body, and are not permitted to speak. Sentinels relieve each other at 
appointed intervals, their duty being to see that the fires are not suffered to go out, 
and to keep the flies away by waving leafy boughs or bunches of emu feathers. When 
a body has been treated in this manner it becomes hard and mummy-like, and the 
strongest point is that the wild dogs will not touch it after it has been so long smoked. 
It remains sitting on the platform for two months or so, and is then taken down and 
buried, with the exception of the skull, which is made into a drinking-cup for the 
nearest relative. * * * 
This mode of mummifying resembles somewhat that already described 
as the process by which the Virginia kings were preserved from decom- 
position. 
Figs. 21 and 22 represent the Australian burials described, and are 
after the original engravings in Wood’s work. The one representing 
scaffold-burial resembles greatly the scaffolds of our own Indians. 
With regard to the use of scaffolds as places of deposit for the dead, 
the following theories by Dr. W. Gardner, United States Army, are given: 
If we come to inquire why the American aborigines placed the dead bodies of their 
relatives and friends in trees, or upon scaffolds resembling trees, instead of burying 
them in the ground, or burning them and preserving their ashes in urns, I think we 
can answer the inquiry by recollecting that most if not all the tribes of American In- 
dians, as well as other nations of a higher civilization, believed that the human soul, 
spirit, or immortal part was of the form and nature of a bird, and as these are essen- 
