BUSHNBLL] ISTATIVE CEMETEEIES AND FORMS OF BURIAL. 97 



11 blanket. They place food and drink beside him, give a change of 

 shoes, his gun, powder, and balls. . . . The body rests in this five 

 or six months until they think that it is rotted, which makes a terrible 

 stench in the house. After some time all the relatives assemble cere- 

 moniously and the fem/me de valleur of the village who has for her 

 function to strip off the flesh from the bones of the dead, comes to 

 take off the flesh from this body, cleans the bones well, and places 

 them in a very clean cane hamper, which they enclose in linen or 

 cloth. They throw the flesh into a field, and this same flesh stripper, 

 without washing her hands, comes to serve food to the assembly. 

 This woman 13 very much honored in the village. After the repast 

 they go singing and howling to carry the bones into the charnel- 

 house of the canton which is a cabin with only one covering in which 

 these hampers are placed in a row on poles. The same ceremony is 

 performed over chiefs except that instead of putting the bones in 

 hampers they are placed in chests ... in the charnel-house of the 

 chiefs." (Eelation de La Louisianne.) 



According to this unknown writer it was the belief of the Choctaw 

 that in after life all performed the same acts and had the same re- 

 quirements as in this; therefore the dead were provided with food, 

 weapons, articles of clothing, and other necessaries. 



Summarizing the several accounts presented on the preceding 

 pagas, it is possible to form a very clear conception of the burial 

 customs of the Choctaw, which evidently varied somewhat in differ- 

 ent parts of their country and at different times. Then again, the 

 observers may not have been overly careful in recording details, but 

 in the main all agree. 



Soon after death a scaffold was erected near the habitation of the 

 deceased or in a near-by grove. Resting upon the scaffold was " a 

 kind of cabin, the shape of a coffin," which undoubtedly varied 

 greatly in form, and in early clays these appear to have been made 

 of wattlework coated with mud and covered over with bark. The 

 body would be placed within this box-like inclosure after first being 

 wrapped in bearskins, a blanket, or some other material of a suitable 

 nature. Food was deposited with the body, and likewise many ob- 

 jects esteemed by the living. With children a lighter frame would 

 serve — crossed poles, as mentioned by Romans and likewise indicated 

 in his drawing. 



Thus the body would remain several months and until the flesh 

 became greatly decayed. Then certain persons, usually men, al- 

 though women at times held the office, would remove all particles of 

 flesh from the bones, using only their fingers in performing this work. 

 The flesh so removed, and all particles scraped from the bones, would 

 be burned, buried in the ground, or merely scattered. Next the 

 bones would be washed and dried ; some were then painted with ver- 

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