SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 729 



We are told by Dumont that the corpse of a Yazoo or Chakchiuma 

 Indian was carried into the woods for burial by relations on each side, 

 each bearing a lighted pine torch which they threw into the grave 

 before it was covered with earth. Afterward the relations and friends 

 went to the grave to cry there "almost every night," for the space of 

 6 months. At the head of a chief's grave they also set up a post on 

 which had been cut with the point of a knife the figure he had worn 

 painted on the body during life (Dumont, 1753, vol. 1, pp. 246-247; 

 Swanton, 1911, p. 334). 



From the fact that the Bayogoula and Houma Indians placed their 

 dead on scaffolds, as well as from the general location of those tribes, 

 it may be inferred that their burial customs w^ere similar to those of 

 the Choctaw, and this derives support from the usages of the Chiti- 

 macha, which were similar. Gatschet was told that 



One year after the death of a [Chitimacha] head chief, or of any of the village 

 war chiefs, of whom there were four or five, their bones were dug up by a certain 

 class of ministrants called "turkey-buzzard men" (osh ha'tehna), the remaining 

 flesh separated, the bones wrapped in a new and checkered mat, and brought to 

 [a "bone house"]. Inhumation of these bones took place just before the beginning 

 of the Kut-ndha [properly Kut-nahTn] worshipping ceremony or dance. The 

 people assembled there, walked six times around, a blazing fire, after which the 

 bones were placed in a mound. The widow and the male orphans of the deceased 

 chief had to take part in the ceremonial dance. The burial of the common 

 Ijeople was effected in the same way, one year after death ; but the inhumation 

 of the bones took place at the villages where they had died. (Gatschet, 1883, p. 

 8; Swanton, 1911, p. 350.) 



I was told that, instead of being wrapped in the mat entire, the bones 

 were burned by the buzzard man and the ashes put into a little basket 

 and then put into the mound (Swanton, 1911, p. 350). 



Our knowledge of Tunica customs belongs to very recent times. It 

 is said that the corpse was buried with its head to the east, and that a 

 fire was lighted at the head on 4 successive nights while the people 

 watched at the grave and fasted. Just before daybreak, after the 

 expiration of the 4 nights, all went down to the water and plunged in. 

 They breakfasted, and the principal speaker delivered an address, 

 after which all put on mourning, the speaker and his relations wearing 

 it during 6 months. A second or corn fast was held for the dead 

 when the little corn was just right to eat. It lasted for 4 days, and 

 was concluded by another plunge into the water followed by a speech, 

 and a dinner ending in an all-night dance. Each cemetery was located 

 on a hill and was under the care of a guardian. Each new year he 

 called the people to throw corn and beans upon the ground there, and 

 they cut the cemetery grass annually (Swanton, 1911, pp. 325-326). 



For the elaborate Caddo burial customs, see Bureau of American 

 Ethnology Bulletin 132 (Swanton, 1942, pp. 203-210). 



