136 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 71 



ered and presented in a single volume. (Mooney, (1).) A few years 

 before the preparation of this most interesting- bulletin a discovery 

 of the greatest importance was made by another member of the 

 bureau staff, Mr. Gatschet, who, while engaged in Louisiana in 1886, 

 discovered a small band of Biloxi, some of whom spoke their old 

 language, which Gatschet soon found was Siouan. The Biloxi there- 

 fore belonged to the great Siouan family, and the neighboring Pas- 

 cagoula were probably of the same stock. These were among the 

 first of the native tribes encountered by the French in 1699, and, for- 

 tunately, a sketch of their burial customs has been preserved. The 

 account was written by a French officer about the year 1730, and, as 

 quoted by Swanton, reads (Dorsey and S wanton, (1), p. 7) : 



" The Paskagoulas and the Billoxis never inter their chief when 

 he is dead, but they have his body dried in the fire and smoke so that 

 they make of it a veritable skeleton. After having reduced it to 

 this condition they carry it to the temple (for they have one as well 

 as the Natchez) and put it in the place occupied by its predecessor, 

 which they take from the place wdiich it occupied to place it with 

 the bodies of their other chiefs in the interior of the temple, where 

 they are all ranged in succession on their feet like statues. With 

 regard to the one last dead, it is exposed at the entrance of the temple 

 on a kind of altar or table made of canes and covered with a very 

 fine mat worked very neatly in red and yellow squares (Quarreaux) 

 with the skin of these same canes. The body of the chief is exposed 

 in the middle of this table upright on its feet, supported behind by 

 a long pole painted red, the end of which passes above his head and 

 to which he is fastened at the middle of the body by a creeper. In 

 one hand he holds a war club or a little ax, in the other a pipe, and 

 above his head is fastened, at the end of the pole which supports 

 him, the most famous of all the calumets which have been presented 

 to him during his life. It may be added that this table is scarcely 

 elevated from the earth half a foot, but it is at least six feet wide 

 and ten long. It is to this table that they come every day to 

 serve food to the dead chief, placing before him dishes of hominy, 

 parched or smoke-dried grain, etc. It is there also that at the begin- 

 ning of all the harvests his subjects offer him the first of all the 

 fruits which they can gather. All of this kind that is presented to 

 him remains on this table, and as the door of the temple is always 

 open, as there is no one appointed to watch it, as consequently who- 

 ever wants to enters, and as besides it is a full quarter of a league 

 distant from the village, it happens that there are commonly strang- 

 ers — hunters or savages — who profit by these dishes and these fruits, 

 or that they are consumed by animals. But that is all the same to 

 these savages. ... It is also before this table that during some 

 months the widow of the chief, his children, his nearest relations, 



