SWANTON] TXDTAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 157 



those who wore poinj; to die, each one followed by his family and singing, dis- 

 persed tluMuselves about the square, and the body was seen to come out of the 

 cabin preceded by the two wives and borne on a litter by four men. The chests 

 of the dead were carried to llie temple without ceremony, with the red baton of 

 which I have spoken, from which lunifj: the canes worked into circles which 

 formed a kind of chain composed of 4(; links or rings. I was told that each 

 ring stood for a man or woman killed by the deceased. With regard to the 

 litter, after having made on going out three circuits around the cabin, it was 

 carried ceremoniously toward the temple, ordinary place of sepulcher of the 

 chiefs. When the body passed opposite those to whom the infant that had been 

 strangled belonged they threw it on the litter;* took it up afterward and 

 threw it down in the same mantier, continuing thus until they had reached the 

 temple. There all those who were going to die ranged themselves in a half 

 circle on their mats before the door in order to be strangled. They were 

 eight, as follows: The two wives of the deceased, his first warrior, La Glorieuse, 

 the head servant and his wife, the mother of La Mizenne, and a maker of war 

 clubs, who were executed together. It seemed as if there was a kind of con- 

 test among them to see who would part first ; to swallow the six pills of tobacco, 

 present his head for the deer skin, and his neck to the cord, was, so to speak, 

 only the same thing. After their death I noticed that the favorite wife was 

 not at all changed and that the cord had not made any impression on her 

 neck. This first execution was followed by the ordinary cries, after which five 

 other persons were strangled on the square, as follows : The nurse of the de- 

 ceased, a doctor of the Apple village, an old woman of the Flour village whose 

 hair was entirely white, and who was so decrepit that during the dances to 

 which she was carried seated on a mat she was hardly able to move her arms 

 in order to keep time, and two other old women. The two wives of the 

 Tattooed-serpent were buried in the temple, and placed with him in the same 

 trench at the right side of the sanctuary. La Glorieuse was also buried on the 

 right side, but outside of the temple, as well as the head servant and his wife, 

 who were placed on the left. W^ith regard to the others, their families carried 

 them back to tlieir villages on stretchers. 



In the evening a man named Picuillon came to take refuge at the settlement, 

 with his wife, for fear that they would put him to death because on one occa- 

 sion he had served as interpreter to the Tattooed-serpent, but they returned to 

 their village next day on the assurance of two savages that they had nothing 

 to fear, and that they would die only with the Flour chief. Thursday one of 

 the two girls among the savages who, as I have said, had come Sunday to ask 

 for a petticoat at the settlement came to seek refuge there also. She told us 

 that she was the daughter of that woman whose head the great chief of war 

 had had cut off, and that a warrior had come to warn them to save themselves ; 

 that her sister had withdrawn to the house of a Frenchman of the fort who had 

 been her husband, and that for her part, if she did not inconvenience us any, 

 she would remain quietly at the settlement with her brother. She was told 

 that she might I'emain. She remained there until the Sunday following, when, 

 having learned that the great war chief was drinking at the fort, she begged 

 Duclos. the great slave Theresa, and I to accompany her there in order to 

 speak to him. I could not go, but on his return Duclos informed me that he 

 had been able to save her life only by saying that he was her husband.^ 



" There seems to be some slip here, as it is evident from the other narratives that the 

 bodies were thrown under the litter, the procession being allowed to go over them. 

 " Dumont, M6m. Hist, sur La Louisiane, i^ 208-239. 



