THE NATCHEZ. 159 



excepting in Peru. My friend Mr. Nuttall has embodied the more striking 

 features of this usage in the following paragraph. " When either the male or 

 female Sun died, all their allouez^ or intimate attendants, devoted themselves to 

 death, under a persuasion that their presence w^ould be necessary to maintain the 

 dignity of their chief in the future vrorld. The wives and husbands of these 

 chiefs were likewise immolated for the same purpose, and considered it the most 

 honorable and desirable of deaths. More than a hundred victims were sometimes 

 sacrificed to the manes of the Great Chief. The same horrible ceremonies, in a 

 more limited degree, were also exercised at the death of the lesser chiefs. 



" At the death of one of their female chiefs, Charlevoix relates, that her 

 husband not being noble, was, according to their custom, strangled by the hands of 

 his own son. Soon after, the two deceased being laid out in state, were 

 surrounded by the dead bodies of twelve infants, strangled by order of the eldest 

 daughter of the late female chief, and who had now succeeded to her dignity. 

 Fourteen other individuals, were also prepared to die, and accompany the deceased. 

 On the day of interment as the procession advanced, the fathers and mothers who 

 had sacrificed their children, preceding the bier, threw the bodies on the ground 

 at different distances, in order that they might be trampled upon by the bearers 

 of the dead. The corpse arriving in the temple where it was to be interred, the 

 fourteen victims now prepared themselves for death by swallowing pills of 

 tobacco and water, and were then strangled by the relations of the deceased, and 

 their bodies cast into the common grave and covered with earth."* 



Among other singular customs of the Natchez, was that of distorting the 

 head by compression. Du Pratz mentions, the women place their newborn 

 infant in a cradle which is about two feet and a half long, nine inches broad, and 

 six inches deep, stuffed beneath with a kind of mattrass, with the plant called 

 Spanish beard. " The infant is laid on its back in the cradle, and fastened to it by 

 the shoulders, the arms, the legs, the thighs and the hips ; and over its forehead 

 are laid two bands of deer-skin, which keep its head to the cushion, and render 

 that part flat:" and he adds, that they never place their children on their feet 

 until they are a year old.f 



During the invasion of Florida, by Ferdinand de Soto, the Spaniards met 

 with some Indians whose heads were moulded precisely into the form above 

 described. "Their heads are incredibly long," (high) observes the historian, "and 



* Travels in Arkansas, p. 271.— Charlevoix, Yoj. de TAmerique, Let. XXX. 

 t Hist, of Louisiana, p. 323. 



