518 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
river, at the Isle des Alumettes, gives more details of the pictures on 
their grave posts: 
On it the likeness of the man or woman who is buried there is roughly engraved. 
If a man, they put on a buckler, aspear, war club, and bows and arrows. If he is a 
chief he will have a plume oa his head and some other designs or ornaments. Ifa 
boy, they give him one bow and a single arrow. If a woman or girl, they put ona 
kettle, an earthen pot, a wooden spoon, and a paddle. The wooden tomb is 6 or 7 
feet long and 4 wide, painted yellow and red. 
Some northern tribes—probably Cree—accordimg to the Jesuit Rela- 
tions (a), gave a notice of death to absent relations or dear friends of 
the deceased by hanging the object signifying his name on the path 
by which the traveler must return, e. g., if the name of the deceased 
was Piré (Partridge) the skin of a partridge was suspended. Themain 
object of the notice was that the traveler, thereby knowing of the death, 
should not on his return to the lodge or village ask after or mention 
the deceased. Perhaps this explains the custom of placing pictographs 
of personal names and totemic marks on some prominent point or on 
trails without any apparent incident. 
The same Relation describes a custom of the same Indians of shaping 
out of wood a portraiture of the more distinguished dead and inserting 
it over their graves, afterwards painting and greasing it as if it were 
the live man. 
In Keating’s Long (g) it is told that the Sac Indians are particular 
in their demonstrations of grief for departed friends. These consist in 
darkening their faces with charcoal, fasting, abstaining from the use 
of vermillion and other ornaments in dress, etc. They also make incis- 
ions in their arms, legs, and other parts of the body; these are not 
made for the purposes of mortification, or to create a pain which shall by 
dividing their attention efface the recollection of their loss, but entirely 
from a belief that their grief is internal and that the only way of dis- 
pelling it is to give it a vent through which to escape. 
This is an explanation of the practice which has been verified in the 
field work of the Bureau of Ethnology and corresponds with the con- 
cept of finding relief from disease and pain by similar incisions, to let 
out the supposed invading entity that causes distress. 
The same authority, p. 332, gives the following account of Dakota 
burial scaffolds: 
On these scaffolds, which are from 8 to 10 feet high, corpses were deposited in a 
box made from part of a broken canoe. Some hair was suspended which we at first 
mistook for a scalp; but our guide informed us that these were locks of hair torn 
from their heads by the relations to testify their grief. In the center, between the 
four posts which supported the scaffold, a stake was planted in the ground; it was 
about 6 feet high, and bore an imitation of human figures; five of which had a de- 
sign of a petticoat, indicating them to be females; the rest, amounting to seven, were 
naked, and were intended for male figures. Of the latter, four were headless, show 
ing that they had been slain; the three other male figures were unmutilated but 
held a staff in their hands which, as our guide informed us, designated that they were 
slaves. The post, which is an usual accompaniment to the scaffold that supports a 
