Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 125 



been entrusted to my care on her passage across the Atlantic to 

 rejoin her husband in London. On one of my visits to Mr. 

 Catlin's exhibition in the Egyptian Hall, London, I happened to 

 see an interesting drawing or rather painting, which he had made 

 on the spot, of the native village of the Mandan tribe of Indians 

 in Mexico, and I was greatly struck at observing that the cemetery 

 of the village had precisely the same singular appearance as that 

 of the New Zealand native cemetery, I had seen a few months 

 before at Kororarika in the Bay of Islands ; the dead bodies in 

 both cases having been wrapped up in mats and laid on trestles 

 raised a few feet above ground. I afterwards found, however, 

 that this was the usual mode of disposing of the dead among the 

 wild Indians of America, so far north even as the Red River 

 Colony in the Hudson's Bay Territory, as witness the following 

 quotation from the journal of the Rev. Mr. West, already quoted 

 above : — 



" On the following morning I saw an Indian corpse staged, or 

 put upon a few cross sticks, about ten feet from the ground, at a 

 short distance from the fort. The property of the dead, which 

 may consist of a kettle, axe, and a few additional articles, is 

 generally put into the case, or wrapped in the buffalo-skin with 

 the body, under the idea that the deceased will want them, or 

 that the spirit of these articles will accompany the departed 

 spirit in travelling to another world. "§ 



On the occasion of my visit to the cemetery at Kororarika, I 

 observed two other customs or practices of the South Sea Island- 

 ers, indicating, together with that of keeping the dead above 

 ground, an Egyptian or contemporary origin, as ancient at least 

 as that of the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt. There 

 happened during my visit to be one of those periodical mourn- 

 ings for the dead in progress which are symptomatic of a similar 

 origin. A number of native men and women were assembled in 

 the cemetery — the former for the most part strongly tattooed, 

 while the latter were ever and anon cutting themselves with 

 mussel shells till the blood streamed down from their cheeks as 

 they gazed intently at the remains of the deceased ; for one of 

 the mummy cases having in the meantime been taken down from 

 the trestle and opened, the bones of the deceased — in all likeli- 

 hood those of a superior chief long deceased — were spread upon 

 a mat on the ground ; the ceremony being occasionally relieved 

 with sudden bursts of dismal and unearthly wailings and howlings 

 in honour of the dead. Now, it is worthy of remark, as a con- 

 firmation of my theory as to the extreme antiquity of the Poly- 

 nesian and Indo-American races, that both of these savage prac. 



§ " Journal of a residence at the Eed River Colony, British North America ;" 

 By John West, M.A. 



