OSSUARIES— NATCHEZ. 77 



operator, after the body is taken down, with his nails tears the remaining 

 flesh off the bones, and throws it with the entrails into the fire, where it is 

 consumed ; then he scrapes the bones and burns the scrapings likewise ; 

 the head being painted red with Vermillion is with the rest of the bones put 

 into a neatly made chest (which for a Chief is also made red) and deposited 

 in the loft of a hut built for that purpose, and called bone house ; each 

 town has one of these ; after remaining here one year or thereabouts, if he 

 be a man of any note, they take the chest down, and in an assembly of rela- 

 tions and friends they weep once more over him, refresh the colour of the 

 head, paint the box, and then deposit him to lasting oblivion. 



"An enemy and one who commits suicide is buried under the earth 

 as one to be directly forgotten and unworthy the above ceremonial obse- 

 quies and mourning." 



Jones* quotes one of the older writers, as follows, regarding the Natchez 

 tribe: 



"Among the Natchez the dead were either inhumed or placed in tombs. 

 These tombs were located within or very near their temples. They rested 

 upon four forked sticks fixed fast in the ground, and were raised some three 

 feet above the earth. About eight feet long and a foot and a half wide, they 

 were prepared for the reception of a single corpse. After the body was 

 placed upon it, a basket-work of twigs was woven around and covered witli 

 mud, an opening being left at the head, through which food was presented 

 to the deceased When the flesh had all rotted away, the bones were taken 

 out, placed in a box made of canes, and then deposited in the temple. The 

 common dead were mourned and lamented for a period of three days. 

 Those who fell in battle were honored with a more protracted and grievous 

 lamentation." 



Bartramf gives a somewhat different account from Roman of burial 

 among the Choctaws of Carolina: 



" The Chactaws pay their last duties and respect to the deceased in 

 a very different manner. As soon as a person is dead, they erect a scaf- 

 fold 18 or 20 feet high in a grove adjacent to the town, where they lay 



•Antiquities of the Southern Indians, 1873, p. 105. 

 t Bartrani'e Travels, 1791, p. 516. 



