194 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
being a bright scarlet bunch, waving and tossing very beautifully. All these com- 
bined gave their heads a very brilliant and spangled appearance. 
The first day the dance was slow and funereal, in honor of the Yo-kai-a chief who 
died a short time before. he music was mournful and simple, being a monotonous 
chant in which only two tones were used, accompanied with a rattling of split sticks 
and stamping on a hollow slab. The second day the dance was more lively on the 
part of the men, the music was better, employing airs which had a greater range of 
tune, and the women generally joined in the chorus. The dress of the women was 
not so beautiful, as they appeared in ordinary calico. The third day, if observed in 
accordance with Indian custom, the dancing was still more lively and the proceedings 
more gay, just as the coming home from a Christian funeral is apt to be much more 
jolly than the going out. 
A Yo-kai-a widow’s style of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the usual evi- 
dences of grief, she mingles the ashes of her dead husband with pitch, making a white 
tar or unguent, with which she smears a band about two inches wide all around the 
edge of the hair (which is previously cut off close to the head), so that at a little 
distance she appears to be wearing a white chaplet. 
It iS their custom to ‘‘ feed the spirits of the dead” for the space of one year by go- 
ing daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent while living, where they 
sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A Yo-kai-a mother who has lost her babe goes every 
day for a year to some place where her little one played when alive, or to the spot 
where the body was burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied 
by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, 
and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild 
estatic swaying of the body. 
SONGS. 
Tt has nearly always been customary to sing songs at not only funerals, 
but for varying periods of time afterwards, although these chants may 
no doubt occasionally have been simply wailing or mournful ejaculation. 
A writer * mentions it as follows: 
At almost all funerals there is an irregular erying kind of singing, with no accom- 
paniments, but generally all do not sing the same melody at the same time in unison. 
Several may sing the same song and at the same time, but each begins and finishes 
when he or she may wish. Often for weeks, or even months, after the decease of a 
dear friend, a living one, usually a woman, will sit by her house and sing or cry by 
the hour, and they also sing for a short time when they visit the grave or meet an es- 
teemed friend whom they have not seen since the decease. At the funeral both men 
and women sing. No. 11 Ihave heard more frequently some time after the funeral, 
and No. 12 at the time of the funeral, by the Twanas. (For song see p. 251 of the 
magazine quoted.) The words are simply an exclamation of grief, as our word “alas,” 
but they also have other words which they use, and sometimes they use merely the 
sylable la. Often the notes are sung in this order, and sometimes not, but in some 
order the notes do and la, and occasionally mi, are sung. 
Some pages back will be found a reference, and the words of a peculiar 
death dirge sung by the Senél of California, as related by Mr. Powers. 
It is as follows: 
Hel-lel-li-ly, 
Hel-lel-lo, 
Hel-lel-lu. 
-*Am, Antiq., April, May, June, 1879, p. 251. 
