306 The American Naturalist. [April, 
Fourthly, and last of all, the Navajos may occasionally resort 
to a tree burial. This practice with them, however, must be 
extremely rare, and up to the present writing I have succeeded 
in collecting but one instance of it. This occurred at about a 
mile from Fort Wingate, and its locality, as well as the mode of | 
placing the body in the tree, are well shown in the plate illus- 
trating this article, and which is a copy from a photograph. 
The deceased was a child, and its body was wrapped in a 
Navajo blanket and carried up into a large piñon tree to a 
horizontal limb about fifteen feet above the ground. At that point 
a rude platform had been constructed of dead and broken limbs, 
but the whole so arranged that after the body had been laid in its 
final resting place it supported it perfectly, and that completely 
in the horizontal position. I have never ascertained the name of 
the family of Indians to which this child belonged, nor why in its 
case they were led to make such a remarkable departure from 
their more common mortuary customs. Perhaps in times gone 
by some of the Navajos may have witnessed the practices of other 
tribes who were “tree-buriers,” and thus had the idea suggested 
to them. All such theories, however, are purely speculative in 
the light of the meagre data now at my hand on this form of 
burial, though it in no way diminishes the interest that attaches 
to the settlement of such a point. 
EN 
a 
