574 TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI [eth. ask. 4o 



Bodies are never interred in a sitting posture, though that manner 

 is sometimes observed when deposited in the lodge above ground and 

 the posture preserved by stakes driven in around the body with forks 

 on the end supporting the different members and equilibrium. 



There are no herbs or spices placed with the corpse, neither is it 

 submitted to any process analogous to embalming. It is enveloped, 

 as before mentioned, in skins to which those who can afford it add 

 scarlet cloth and blankets. 



Scaffolding of corpses is the general manner of disposing of them 

 with all the prairie tribes, and the way they are prepared has been 

 alluded to. They would prefer having them boxed instead of baled, 

 but have no tools to prepare timber, and even if they had can not 

 at all times procure it, which together with their lack of means to 

 excavate in these frozen regions were no doubt the original causes 

 of this mode of burial. When bodies are brought to the trading 

 houses for interment or scaffolding they are always boxed by the 

 whites, the coffin being made large enough to contain the implements 

 and ornaments enveloped with the corpse. This in former times 

 "was a great honor done the Indians and highly recompensed, but 

 of later years is a great bore and expense. 



This method of securing them can, however, only be embraced 

 when death takes place near the houses, and consequently happens 

 to few. The Mandan and Gros Ventres, being stationed at the fort 

 with those nations, have their dead boxed by the whites and placed 

 on a scaffold made of posts planted near their villages. The Arikara 

 prefer interring them in the ground, and all the rest of the tribes 

 place their dead, secured in the manner described before, in the forks 

 of trees, which in a year or two, as soon as the cords rot off and 

 the envelopes fall to pieces, are blown down, and the bones are found 

 scattered beneath. Carnivorous birds, such as eagles, ravens, and 

 magpies, often pick at the envelope until they get at the body, but if 

 it is well strapped in rawhide it is generally secure from either birds 

 or beasts as long as it remains in the tree. 



It is the custom of the Assiniboin to put up a funeral flag over 

 the graves of their dead, particularly children, which at this time 

 is composed of some such fabric as red flannel or calico tied to a pole, 

 but which was formerly made of feathers and light skins. This is a 

 very ancient custom, arising, we are told, from the necessity of 

 having some such object thus raised which, fluttering in the wind, 

 frightens away the beasts and birds of prey. 



The custom of collecting and reinterring the bones is very gen- 

 eral at the present day among all these tribes; indeed, it is seldom 

 neglected if when they visit the scaffold they find the body to have 

 blown clown and the bones exposed. 



