180 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
With most of the Northwest Indians it was quite common, as men- 
tioned by Mr. Gibbs, to kill or bury with the dead a living slave, who, 
failing to die within three days, was strangled by another slave; but 
the custom has also prevailed among other tribes and peoples, in many 
eases the individuals offering themselves as voluntary sacrifices. Ban- 
croft states that— 
In Panama, Nata, and some other districts, when a cacique died, those of his con- 
cubines that loved him enough, those that he loved ardently and so appointed, as well 
as certain servants, killed themselves and were interred with him. This they did in 
order that they might wait upon him in the land of spirits. : 
It is well known to all readers of history to what an extreme this re- 
volting practice has prevailed in Mexico, South America, and Africa. 
AQUATIC BURIAL, 
As a confirmed rite or ceremony, this mode of disposing of the dead 
has never been followed by any of our North American Indians, al- 
though occasionally the dead have been disposed of by sinking in springs 
or water-courses, by throwing into the sea, or by setting afloat in ca- 
noes. Among the nations of antiquity the practice was not uncommon, 
for we are informed that the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eaters, mentioned by 
Ptolemy, living in a region bordering on the Persian Gulf, invariably 
committed their dead to the sea, thus repaying the obligations they had 
incurred to its inhabitants. The Lotophagians did the same, and the 
Hyperboreans, with a commendable degree of forethought for the sur- 
vivors, when ill or about to die, threw themselves into the sea. The 
burial of Balder “ the beautiful,” it may be remembered, was in a highly 
decorated ship, which was pushed down to the sea, set on fire, and com- 
mitted to the waves. The Itzas of Guatemala, living on the islands of 
Lake Peten, according to Bancroft, are said to have thrown their dead 
into the lake for want of room. The Indians of Nootka Sound and the 
Chinooks were in the habit of thus getting rid of their dead slaves, and, 
according to Timberlake, the Cherokees of Tennessee “seldom bury the 
dead, but throw them into the river.” 
The Alibamans, as they were called by Bossu, denied the rite of sep- 
ulture to suicides; they were looked upon as cowards, and their bodies 
thrown into a river. The Rey. J. G. Wood* states that the Obongo or 
African tribe take the body to some running stream, the course of which 
has been previously diverted. A deep grave is dug in the bed of the 
stream, the body placed in it, and covered over carefully. Lastly, the 
stream is restored to its original course, so that all traces of the grave 
are soon lost. 
The Kavague also bury their common people, or wanjambo, by sin- 
ply sinking the body in some stream. 
* Uncivilized Races of the World, 1870, vol. i, p. 483. 
