FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 
349 
A relative of the deceased now jumped up, with 
his weapons, violently excited, and apparently with 
the intention of spearing some one ; but he was at 
once restrained by his friends, who informed me that 
the investigation had satisfied them that the man 
had not died through the agency of sorcery ; if he 
had, it is imagined that a cicatrice would have been 
found upon the omentum. Two men now got into 
the grave, spread a cloth in the bottom, and over 
that green boughs. Other natives turned the bier 
round, and lifting up the body, gave it to the two in 
the grave to lay in its proper position, which was 
quite horizontal, and with the head to the west,* 
the grave being dug east and west : green boughs 
were now thrown thickly into it, and earth 
was pushed in by the bystanders with their feet, 
until a mound had been raised some height above 
the ground. All was now over, and the natives 
began to disperse, upon which the wild and piercing 
wail of the mourners became redoubled. 
Upon the mounds, or tumuli, over the graves, 
huts of bark, or boughs, are generally erected to 
shelter the dead from the rain ; they are also fre- 
quently wound round with netting. Many graves 
being usually in one vicinity, and an elevated dry 
* This appears to be a very general custom, and to be of 
Eastern origin. Catlin describes it as always being attended to 
at the disposaFof the dead by the American Indians. In South 
Africa, however, Moffat states (p. 307), “ that the corpse is put 
exactly facing the north.” 
