BURIAL FOOD AND SONGS. 99 



Yo-kaf-a chief who died a short time before. The music was mournful and 

 simple, being a monotonous chant in which only two tones were used, 

 accompanied with a rattling' of split sticks and stamping- on a- hollow slab. 

 The second day the dance was more lively on the part of the men, the 

 music was better, employing airs which had a greater range of tune, and 

 the women generally joined in the chorus. The dress of the women was 

 not so beautiful, as they appeared in ordinary calico The third day, if 

 observed in accordance with Indian custom, the dancing was still more 

 lively and the proceedings more gay, just as the coming home from a 

 Christian funeral is apt to be much more jolly than the going out. 



"A Yo-kaf-a widow's stvle of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the 

 usual evidences of grief, she mingles the ashes of her dead husband with 

 pitch, making a white tar or unguent, with which she smears a band about 

 two inches wide all around the edge of the hair (which is previously cut off 

 close to the head), so that at a little distance she appears to be wearing a 

 white chaplet. 



"It is their custom to 'feed the spirits of the dead' for the space of 

 one year by going daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent 

 while living, where they sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A Yo-kai-a 

 mother who has lost her l>abe goes every day for a year to some place 

 where her little one played when alive, or to the spot where the body was 

 burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied by plaint- 

 ive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, 

 and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant and dances with a 

 wild ecstatic swaying of her body." 



SONGS. 



It has nearly always been customary to sing songs at not only fune- 

 rals but for varying periods of time afterwards, although these chants may 

 no doubt occasionally have been simply wailing or mournful ejaculation. 

 A writer* mentions it as follows : 



"At almost all funerals there is an irregular crying- kind of singing, 

 with no accompaniments, but generally all do not sing the same melody at 



* Am. Antiq., April, May, Juno, 1^79, p. 251. 



