bushnell] 



ISTATTVE CEMETERIES AND FORMS OF BURTAL 



105 



Du Pratz a generation later gave a more detailed description and 

 told how the temple stood on " a mound of earth brought thither 

 which rises about 8 feet above the natural level of the ground on the 

 bank of a little river." Thus an artificial mound of earth had been 

 reared to serve as a site for the temple. Du Pratz's drawing of the 

 temple is reproduced in figure 13. (Du Pratz, (1), III, pp. 15-20.) 



The burial customs of the northern and southern tribes differed in 

 many ways, but the habit of removing the bones of the dead from an 

 old settlement to a new site, so vividly described by Heckewelder 

 as being followed by the " Nanticoke during the first half of the 

 eighteenth century, finds a parallel in the far south. To quote 

 from Pere Charlevoix, who wrote under date of January 26, 1722, 

 there stood, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, immediately 

 below the English reach, a short distance below New Orleans, " not 



Fig. 13. — The Natchez Temple, after Du Pratz. 



long since, a village of the Chouachas^ the ruins of which, I have 

 visited. Nothing remains entire but the cabbin of the chief, which 

 bears a great resemblance to one of our peasants houses in France, 

 with this difference only, that it has no windows. It is built of the 

 branches of trees, the voids of which are filled up with the leaves of 

 the trees called lataniers [palmetto], and its roof is of the same 

 materials." The " village is at present on the other side of the river, 

 half a league lower, and the Indians have transported thither even 

 the bones of their dead." (Charlevoix, (1), II, p. 292.) ' 



THE CHICKASAW 



The Chickasaw lived in the hilly country north of the Choctaw, 

 and although of the same stock they were ever enemies. Many of 

 their customs differed and instead of the elaborate burial ceremonies 

 of the Choctaw, "They bury their dead almost the moment the 

 breath is out of the body, in the very spot under the couch on which 

 the deceased died, and the nearest relations mourn over it with 



