726 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bult. 137 



succession. The mourners anciently had their hair entirely cut off 

 but later on a single lock was treated in this manner. At any rate 

 the women left their hair disheveled, paid mourners were utilized, 

 and there were wailings three times a day — at sunrise, at noon, and 

 at sunset. Benches were made near the scaffold for the mourners, and 

 there was a fence or mud wall about the scaffold itself. After the 

 flesh was thought to be sufficiently decayed, the bone picker or "buz- 

 zard man" of that particular canton appointed a day, and in the 

 presence of the mourners, who meanwhile sang lugubrious songs, he 

 removed the flesh from the bones and restored the latter to the family, 

 who put them into a chest made of bones and splints or a hamper and 

 took it in procession to the cantonal mortuary house. If the bones 

 belonged to a chief, they were placed in a separate charnel house. 

 Adair says that the bones were laid in this chest in their natural 

 order, but this would seem to imply a longer chest than is commonly 

 indicated. Some writers say the flesh was buried and some that it 

 was burned — according to one, along with the scaffold on which it 

 rested. Immediately before this there was a feast. Adair states 

 that there was a wooden ladder at each burial house and on top of 

 the house itself a dove carved in wood. At both the burial house and 

 the private tomb there hung a chain, the links made of grapevines, and 

 this is said by some writers to have been intended as a ladder by which 

 the spirit of the dead might ascend to the world above, but Halbert 

 scouts the idea, and rings used in connection with Natchez burial cere- 

 monies indicated the war honors of the deceased. After the charnel 

 house had become pretty well filled with boxes of bones, a final disposi- 

 tion was made of them. The bone pickers of the various cantons agreed 

 upon a day when the grave boxes should be moved, and they were 

 carried to one place in solemn procession, piled up into a pyramid 

 there and covered with earth. According to some, the burial mound 

 might be added to on several different occasions, and according to 

 one informant, the bone house was covered over in situ after it had 

 become full. Early in November there was a great feast to the 

 dead when the cantonal ossuary was visited by the relatives of those 

 whose bones had been laid away there. Halbert says there were 

 two such gatherings annually, in spring and fall. At these each 

 moiety cried and danced alternately for the deceased belonging to 

 the other, and each piled up and buried the bones of the "opposites." 

 In the early part of the nineteenth century, under tlie influence of 

 the missionaries, a change was introduced into the burial customs. 

 A death was first announced by the discharge of guns. The corpse 

 was buried in the ground immediately and seven poles were set up 

 around it, three on each side and one at the head, on which was hung 

 a string of grapevine hoops and a flag. According to Claiborne, 



