142 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99 



SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL 



At death the soul leaves the body and becomes a ghost (aSGf'na). 

 It travels to the ghost country (tsu'sGtnoyi), in the Night Land 

 (u^so'^'yi'), in the west, in seven days. 



It does not haunt the settlements, nor the burial places, nor does 

 it ever return. Some informants are not so sure as to this: they claim 

 that the ghosts sometimes return, viz, when they come to make 

 people ill, or to come and fetch them before they die, to show them 

 the way to the ghost coimtry. These opinions, however, I am inclined 

 to consider as individual beliefs, based chiefly on dreams and personal 

 experiences. 



In tlie Night Land the ghost people live exactly according to the 

 native pattern; they live in settlements, have chiefs and councils, 

 clans and families (everybody who dies goes and joins the relatives 

 who have preceded him); they go hunting and fishing, have ball 

 games and dances, etc. 



There does not seem to exist any differentiation based upon moral 

 conduct in this life, the Cherokee believing that morality is to be 

 observed for its own sake, without hope of recompense or fear of 

 punishment in the next life. These conceptions are now slowly being 

 superseded by hazy beliefs influenced by Christian oschatology. 



Some interesting facts on this score are being revealed by dreams, 

 which indicate that some kind of a differentiation must once have 

 been believed in, of which people now have lost all recollection. 



One informant (AV.) told me his mother (Ayo.) was wont to tell 

 him of the following experience of hers: 



Shortly after the Civil War the Cherokee were visited with smallpox. 

 She was one of the many stricken, and she died (sic); she went along 

 a road and came to a settlement where the people lived who had died ; 

 as she traveled on slie came to another settlement, the chief of which 

 had been a chief in his lifetime; she had known him. The chiefs held 

 a council about her and decided that she could not come and live 

 mth them yet. They sent her back. So she walked back to where 

 she lived. She recovered from the smallpox. "And it was not a 

 dream cither," the informant added. 



Another, far more interesting experience was told by the individual 

 to whom it happened, T. (PI. 10, c.) He relates it as follows: 



About 37 years ago ho was very ill; all his relatives expected him 

 to die, and they had gathered by his bedside. He became uncon- 

 scious; it seemed to him as if he fell asleep. The people who were 

 with him told him later that he actually died; he did not breathe for 

 half an hour. 



It seemed to him as if he got up from his bed, walked out of the 

 cabin, and started traveling ahuig a path. lie clhubcd to the top of 

 a mountain, where suddenly he saw a beautiful plain, a meadow, 



