78 OSSUARIES— IROQUOIS. 



the corps, lightly covered with a mantle; here it is suffered to remain, 

 visited and protected by the friends and relations, until the flesh becomes 

 putrid, so as easily to part from the bones ; then undertakers, who make it 

 their business, carefully strip the flesh from the bones, wash and cleanse 

 them, and when dry and purified by the air, having provided a curiously- 

 wrought chest or coffin, fabricated of bones and splints, they place all the 

 bones therein, which is deposited in the bone-house, a building erected for 

 that purpose in every town ; and when this house is full a general solemn 

 funeral takes place ; when the nearest kindred or friends of the deceased, on 

 a day appointed, repair to the bone-house, take up the respective coffins, 

 and, following one another in order of seniority, the nearest relations and 

 connections attending their respective corps, and the multitude following 

 after them, all as one family, with united voice of alternate allelujah and 

 lamentation, slowly proceeding on to the place of general interment, when 

 they place the coffins in order, forming a pyramid ;* and, lastly, cover all 

 over with earth, which raises a conical hill or mount; when they return to 

 town in order of solemn procession, concluding the day with a festival, 

 which is called the feast of the dead." 



Morganf also alludes to this mode of burial : 



" The body of the deceased was exposed upon a bark scaffolding 

 erected upon poles or secured upon the limbs of trees, where it was left to 

 waste to a skeleton. After this had been effected by the process of decom- 

 position in the open air, the bones were removed either to the former house 

 of the deceased, or to a small bark-house by its side, prepared for their 

 reception. In this manner the skeletons of the whole family were preserved 

 from generation to generation by the filial or parental affection of the living. 

 After the lapse of a number of years, or in a season of public insecurity, 

 or on the eve of abandoning a settlemeut,*it was customary to collect these 

 skeletons from the whole community around and consign them to a com- 

 mon resting-place. 



" To this custom, which is not confined to the Iroquois, is doubtless to 



* " Some ingenious men whom I have conversed with have given it as their opinion that all those 

 pyramidal artificial hills, usually called Indian mounds, were raised on this occasion, and are gene- 

 rally sepulehers. However, I am of different opinion." 



t League of the Iroquois, 1851, p. 173. 



